Comments

1. Just A Thought wrote:

   “Other possibilities include that Semenya has underdeveloped male sexual organs inside of her body or an unusually high number of male chromosomes”

   You cannot have an unusually high number of male chromosomes. You can have hormone imbalances that cause more male characteristics to develop, but not male chromosomes. If a person has gender specific DNA, then they are technically whatever gender their DNA makeup says they are, regardless of phenotype. While there are several genetic disorders that cause the presence of multiple X chromosomes, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any with more than one Y chromosome.

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:16 am ¶

2. blu2 tru wrote:

   Regardless of how this turns out (and aside from racial issues-which are STRONG here) the fact that the other runners accused her of being male and having an “unfair” advantage because of that kills any arguements women have made over time that genders are equal and males do not better women…..

   “Anything you can do I can do better…..except run! You must be a man cuz you run faster!” SMDH

   Way to push us back on a multitude of levels

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:43 am ¶

3. Triseult wrote:

   If there’s an issue of racism here, it’s definitely overshadowed by the greater issue of gender issues, in my opinion. Gender testing has a sordid history rooted in, as you point out, ridiculous notions of feminity that should have nothing to do with sports performance.

   I can only imagine how hurt Semenya must be about this. This is the nastiest form of personal attack that could be made against her, and her family must be devastated.

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:43 am ¶

4. Barbara wrote:

   UK papers report that Caster has much higher testosterone levels than are typical for women athletes.

   So, I’m not sure whether to attribute the charges to racism or not. I do know that the report of Caster undergoing sex exams was supposed to be private and the fact that it was widely released is a problem.

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:47 am ¶

5. Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:

   Yes, I think this is racist. Right away from the start, I knew this was racist. Obviously, the woman does not meet the “ideal” Western, Caucasian female beauty standards, so these jerks had to go and humiliate her.

   I feel so embarrassed and angry for her.

   This isn’t only racist, but SEXIST as well. Why can’t people accept that a woman CAN be as strong, fast, and effective as a male athlete?

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:49 am ¶

6. Medusa wrote:

   Yeah, I’m part of the “this is racist” camp. Black women are routinely stereotyped as being masculine. If this were an Asian woman, or a Latina woman, or a white woman, I’m not sure this conversation would even be happening.

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:58 am ¶

7. aubin wrote:

   I don’t think this is an issue of racism especially as it has come up with numerous athletes of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds over the years (most notably with eastern European and Russian athletes). It is, however, an issue of sexism, heterosexism and gender normativity. What athletes like Semenya prove is how arbitrary the relationship between biological sex and gender expression is. She has big muscles and washboard abs because… she’s a freakin’ athlete and, apparently, rising to the top in her field. She may be taking steroids (which I really hope is not the case) or she may just be more built than the ‘typical’ female athlete.

   @Just a Thought: DNA does not determine gender expression, only society does. Many people are born with chromosomal variations outside of the typical XX and XY. And even those with the typical chromosomes can express gender attributes outside what is considered socially ‘normal’ for their sex.

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:08 am ¶

8. Cindy wrote:

   There are plenty of female athletes just as muscular as Semenya. There have been results leaked that she has higher than normal testosterone levels, which doesn’t prove anything about her gender. Several possible chromosomal anomolies…XXY for one also doesn’t prove anything about her gender. Proving gender is not as cut and dry as we would like to think, but I don’t think that is the true issue here.

   I believe her darker skin definitely plays a part in the accusation. Her more “masculine” features come in to play too. FloJo was a flat chested muscled woman during her prime competitive days. She just met the definition of feminine with more delicate features, fairer skin, long hair and long nails. What exactly do we define as being female?

   Other athletes don’t dare cry the drug accusation lest the microscope be pointed back at them. What better than to claim than she is not genetically female. It’s most likely not based on anything other than a darked skin young woman kicked everybody’s ass.

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:08 am ¶

9. Slush wrote:

   I do think a white woman with otherwise similar ‘masculine traits’ to Semenya’s would get pretty much the same shtick. Which isn’t to say that therefore racism is not a part of it. I think it’s a good argument to say that dominant ideas of masculinity and feminity come from white ideals, which may not fit properly onto other races. (Not that they fit properly on white people either.)

   The gender-identity question here though is so nuts I can barely sot it out. What if a trans-woman were the fastest female runner in the world? She’s not legitimate? Who decides what makes someone legitimately male or female, or something solidly in-between?

   Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:11 am ¶

10. n wrote:

    I think that there is SOME degree of racism. Michell O, the Williams sisters, Usher’s wife etc- dark skinned muscular strong women with african facial features are frequently categorized as “hard” or”mannish”.

    I see a lot of nonwhite women who seem to have NO hips at all and I think many people do have a certain expectation of how a normal female body looks, and that doesn’t include a lot of normal variations.

    HOWEVER, even at home Caster was mistaken for a boy, so it isnt just a matter of differing cultural ideals or expectations.

    Regardless, this is absolutely horrible for her. How embarrassing.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:13 am ¶

11. aubin wrote:

    And another thing: what difference does it make? Why is it important that Semenya ‘prove’ her biological sex as female? Why do we continue to accept gender segregation in sports? This was originally done to ensure that women would not compete directly with men and thus possibly defeat men. It seems that now many believe that it gives women a ‘fair’ way to participate in sports but that’s not how it started out. Rather, it is just a so-called ’separate but equal’ arrangement. Can you imagine if we had separate events based on race still??? As women’s world record times approach men’s, it’s becoming clearer that perhaps women have physical abilities comparable to men.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:18 am ¶

12. Adrianna wrote:

    I really feel sorry for this young woman, She must be humiliated and suffering . All she wanted was to enjoy her win and basked in it.This carp make me hate the world, for all it’s femininity standard which has to be pushed down our throat, because of the heterosexual gaze, the white gaze. women , women of color can never win never! we will never live up to the models. so I suggest that these moron clone them.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:20 am ¶

13. n wrote:

    Most women don’t look feminine without a LOT of help. I think for a LOT of us, female and feminine are seen as the same thing and when a woman isn’t in drag, we see her not as female but as masculine because the standard has shifted so far.
    In cultures where men shave, I think women have to work even harder to look “feminine”. I say this because I was thinking that many of us women would look mannish or boyish if we didn’t do the long hair, the makeup, the brow grooming etc. Then I realized that is because we are contrasting a normal female face with a shaved male face.

    So for a woman to look feminine, she has to have NO facial hair, long scalp hair, tiny eyebrows, full red lips, no body hair and big breasts. People were saying she looked like a man because she had armpit hair.

    WOMEN HAVE ARMPIT HAIR. Women have facial hair. Women with certain hair textures do not have hair that falls about the face,framing it and “softening” the lines. Black women often have large noses and flaring nostrils. Thats not “male”.

    I believe most people in the Western world do NOT know what a normal natural black woman looks like sans weave, relaxer, makeup, waxing and so on. It takes a lot of work to turn a woman into something “feminine”.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:28 am ¶

14. Vicky wrote:

    I would say race is ever present in this discussion about Caster Semenya. I follow athletics and there has always been an undercurrent of eugenics when discussing why certain athletes are better than others. With the current dominance by Jamaica in the sprints and Kenya/Ethiopia in the middle to long distances, you often find commentators at a loss to explain why people from certain countries always win. Similiar with the way Serena and Venus Williams are described, in athletics when a non-black athlete wins it’s always about how hard they worked etc whereas with black athletes the focus tends to be on natural talent. So I can’t look at this case with Caster Semenya without that background to it as well.

    You’ll find there is a history of black female athletes being accused “looking like men” with Maria Mutola from Mozambique being one promenient African example. That Caster Semenya has facial hair is being used as evidence she may be a man is something I find hilarious considering the amount of money women spend getting rid of their body and facial hair.

    Race and gender issues are in play here no doubt but the analysis that is coming out of this case and commentary is very racial. You have people saying things like “90% of all dark-skinned African women look like men” or in published articles in the LATimes:

    The Bantu, a group of indigenous South African people, may be more predisposed to being hermaphrodites but they do not always have obvious male genitalia, said Dr. Maria New, an endocrinologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine

    There is also the question about the power of athletics organisations in individual countries. I cannot imagine that if Semenya represented Great Britian, Russia or the USA it would have been allowed to get this far. South Africa did its best to try and protect her but the damage was done with the European and International press.

    So yes, I do believe this is racist as well as sexist. I would not discount the racist element to it at all.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:35 am ¶

15. Maggie wrote:

    I think there’s definitely been racism and sexism involved in this. As well as a long history of piss-poor organizational standards for what does and does not constitute cheating.

    If a guy is faking being a girl to compete in women’s sports, or if a woman is being pumped full of testosterone (a la the East German swim team of yore) that’s cheating.

    But my understanding is that (other than the jealous and racist rivals) nobody is accusing Caster Semenya of either of those things. The “accusation” is that she’s got higher-than-average testosterone levels or some genetic abnormality that makes her appear female in some respects, but male in others. And that this is both natural and something she knew nothing about.

    In which case, I have to ask, how the hell is that any different from the genetic abnormalities that make Michael Phelps so damn good at swimming? I seem to recall sports commentators talking Phelps’ genetic oddities up as part of what made him awesome, not as something that should get him banned from competition.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:37 am ¶

16. tanglad wrote:

    Many non-Western societies recognize gender variance. For example, hijras in India and Pakistan, the kathoey in Thailand. Still other categories of gender were violently erased via colonialism (for ex., the bayoguin in the Philippines). So yeah, the strict male-female binary, with its Eurocentric categories of maleness and femaleness, is deeply racist to begin with.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:43 am ¶

17. cocolamala wrote:

    i also think it has racial overtones. black women are too frequently characterized as unfeminine, masculine, hard, and mannish.

    but strength and muscles are what it takes to be a champion competitor, why get upset when this woman exhibits exactly that?

    there are mannish looking women and feminine looking men. that is all.

    i am not not a fan of this genetic inquiry either, looking down into her chromosomes to detect a whiff of masculinity. it strikes me as unnecessary. if all athletes were scrutinized this way it might seem more fair.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 11:59 am ¶

18. Queen B wrote:

    I definitely believe that race has something to do with the allegations that this amazing female athlete is really a man. The bottom line is that her mostly white competitors felt, based on nothing more than her physical appearance and tone of voice, that she was more man than woman.

    Gender like race is some sense is socially constructed. If Caster had fair skin, long hair and less muscles, would anyone be accusing her of being a man?

    There are so many things women do to differientate ourselves from men such as wearing make up, jewlery, nail polish, or shaving which have nothing to do with biology and everything to do with what many perceive to be feminine. In our society, being fat is frowned up but being very muscular for a woman is not praised either.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 12:02 pm ¶

19. another constellation wrote:

    I think it’s racist, sexist, misogonist, and transmisogonist. I appreciated you refering to it as “sex” testing, not “gender” testing– many people who should know better have made that mistake. Her gender isn’t going to change with the results of this incredibly invasive test.

    But I’m disappointed with the final lines of this piece. If Caster exhibits “typically male” traits, why look for what she did wrong (i.e., doping)? If she exhibits “typically male traits,” who’s to say that’s not how she was born? Why do we need to look for an “explanation”?

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 12:11 pm ¶

20. AJ Plaid wrote:

    I agree with those who say this is a racist attack. I think the racism plays out in who did the accusing–an Italian and a Russian, who are read in US and some other parts of the world as eyes as being “white” and who are coming off as sore losers who want to disparage Caster because she’s just a great athlete–with a washboard stomach that many women athletes of many hues have.

    It has echoes of the “sore white folks” stench that stinks up arguments around affirmative action and the off-the-chain attacks Obama has been going through since he decided to run for POTUS, from Gloria Steinem’s and Geraldine Ferraro’s famous op-ed attacks on his qualifications to the current sound-and-fury screamings about his whether-or-not circumsized penis and it being the new litmus test for his presidential fitness.

    If this makes sense, the racism hurled at Semenya rests precisely in her gender. It’s the old adage about anti-Black racism: it makes Black men feel stupid and Black women ugly. By the other athletes screaming, “She’s a man!!” and the Federation demanding that Semenya go through an exam to “prove” her femaleness is a way to denigrate her Black womanhood, to put her “otherized” femininity up for public inspection. Sorta of like Saartjie Baartman, the “Venus Hottentot.”

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 12:38 pm ¶

21. SR wrote:

    I sense a pattern of racism in recent international sports controversies. If the winner is nonwhite, there always has to be something wrong. Everything from age to diet to gender is scrutinized after the fact.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 1:15 pm ¶

22. erin wrote:

    On a related note, the issue of black women and gender is one that has also come up in LGBT/queer circles. I’ve heard many times that often black lesbians are perceived to be butches or studs by white lesbians, even when they’re not. So there’s this underlying idea that black woman=more masculine.

    It is completely an intersection of racism and sexism.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 2:19 pm ¶

23. Stidit wrote:

    Intersexual people are problematic for women’s sports, but that hardly has anything to do with race. Like a previous commentator already stated, similar accusations were made against a number of athletes from the Eastern Bloc in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

    The controversy surrounding Semenya reminds us of the fact that on rare occasions a person’s sex is not easily determinable. There is a small minority of people that can’t really be classified as either male or female.

    In the world of sports, these people fall between the cracks. An intersexual person, who considers himself a man, doesn’t have the physical tools to compete with other men at a high level, but it’s also easy to see that an intersexual woman has an unfair advantage over her competitors.

    For Semenya, it’s tragic, as she considers herself a woman and has devoted much of her life to reach the top, but allowing intersexual people to compete alongside women (at top levels at least) doesn’t seem like a fair solution either.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 3:51 pm ¶

24. Eva wrote:

    I do think this is racism. There is a very Euro centric ideal of what a woman is; small, petite, fragile. Many black women have been labeled “masculine” as was demonstrated by that piece about the Real Housewives of Atlanta because some of us do not have the Euro centric ideal features that many people consider feminine.

    BTW, when I was younger, people used to ask me if I was a boy, until I turned 25 and magically breasts and hips appeared on me. She’s 18, leave her alone.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 4:25 pm ¶

25. BSK wrote:

    Some people have made some interesting posts regarding the sexism of sex-differentiated sporting events. Some have likened it to “separate but equal” and have called for all sex’s to compete together. While some sports are specifically sex-segregated, many aren’t. But those that are sex-segregated are done so for a reason: to give both sexes an equal opportunity to compete. In certain sports, men dominate because typical male physical characteristics allow them to. For example, the women’s world record in the 200M would be a full 3/4 of a second behind the 8th place male finisher at this year’s World Championships. In other sports, women dominate, or would dominate, if put in direct competition. The balance beam and uneven bars in gymnastics are one example.

    I understand the social implications of one’s stated gender, but to ignore sex differences is to do a injustice to both sexes.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 4:37 pm ¶

26. BSK wrote:

    To clarify, if there was a woman who could qualify for a men’s event (or vice versa), I’d be all for it. But absent this, if we were to eliminate such sex divisions, we simply would be limiting the opportunities for many people to event, and this like would serve to eliminate more opportunities for women then for men.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 4:39 pm ¶

27. aconerlycoleman wrote:

    @ Vicky

    I believe the proper term for “hermaphrodites” is “intersex individuals.” ‘Hermaphrodite’ has negative connotations, that ‘intersex’ bypasses. Also, intersex is more appropriate, as it relates to the chromosomal anomaly, whereas “hermaphroditism” is derived from myth (Hermes, Aphrodite)

    I agree wholeheartedly that this is racist and misogynist.

    It’s worth mentioning that the 800 meter race is one that is more heavily run by European athletes (by my own observations). You’ll see more African (and non-European) runners in the 200 meter or the hurdles. So for Caster Semenya to win by such a large margin had to be a shock to some…

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 4:48 pm ¶

28. Lisa wrote:

    Cosign all the previous comments on the racism-sexism intersection. I would also add that sex testing will not necessarily put this issue to rest. (And not just because some people won’t believe the test results.)

    Read this Explainer column on Slate.com to see why it’s not a cut-and-dried, yes/no kind of testing:

    http://www.slate.com/id/2155828/

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 5:13 pm ¶

29. 9jah wrote:

    Whoa! On its face, I don’t believe this has anything to do with race. We can’t just force every racist plotline into this. I think it involves gender/privacy issues more than anything.

    I am a black man. Sure black women have a different physical structure…BUT, some women (of all races) do possess physical characteristics more typically found in men (broad jaw seems a usual suspect) and vice-versa. Semanya possesses certain of these traits as do Martina Navratilova. No need to be squeamish, it probably just means they picked up more of their fathers’ physical traits (i.e. Serena). Not that this should provide a platform for insults.

    @Aubin/7: I co-sign completely, except I dont agree in your assessment of how “arbitrary” the relationship between biological sex and gender expression. It is generally a consistent relationship, but I agree that we should be more aware of divergences from the norm.

    @Tanglad/16:
    The strict male-female binary, whatever its flaws, is subscribed to by most in the world so how can it be racist? I also don’t agree that categories of maleness and femaleness are per se Eurocentric concepts.

    @AJ Plaid/20:
    “I think the racism plays out in who did the accusing–an Italian and a Russian.”

    Are you serious??? They are racist by virtue of nationality and nothing else? That’s a heck of a generalization, friend.

    My opinion…but ppl sometimes introduce race as an issue in knee jerk fashion. My fear is it diminishes others’ understanding of how harmful racism can actually be when it does clearly occur.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 6:10 pm ¶

30. lala wrote:

    There’s a somewhat similar story about German tennis player Sarah Gronert, who was born intersex. Gronert is white and has long blonde hair. Comparing articles about Gronert and Semenya might be illustrative.

    Here’s an article about Gronert that opens by describing her as “beautiful”:
    http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/2009/03/20/2009-03-20_german_tennis_player_sarah_gronert_embro.html

    I haven’t noticed any articles calling Semenya beautiful.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 6:11 pm ¶

31. distance88 wrote:

    Is the Caster Semenya sex controversy racist? It’s very likely . I’d like to see some data on the demographic breakdown of athletes accused of and caught cheating in sports. Probably some interesting patterns there..

    Historically speaking though, people from all over the damn place cheat at sports. Name any game or sport and I’ll give you about a hundred different ways to cheat at it–let’s face it, this practice isn’t foreign to anybody.

    What strikes me more are the gender/sex aspects: in most of the world, gender and sex are treated as either-or propositions, with clear sets of rules and distinctions between male and female. But in reality, sex and gender are much more fluid and exist on a continuum–not a dichotomy.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 6:18 pm ¶

32. T. wrote:

    I agree with a lot of what’s been said above. Black women have traditionally been denied their womanhood/femininity due to eurocentric beauty ideals and poverty (working women being less feminine than those who stay indoors and maintain their fair complexions and uncalloused hands).

    As far as the sex/gender piece goes, am I the only one who looks at her and thinks that she’s just a professional athlete? I mean, super muscular with a small or flat chest is just what I typically expect from professional women athletes. I do think that if she had been lighter skinned, wore her hair long and straight, and had more delicate features that this wouldn’t be such an issue.

    And as far as female-assigned people go, we know that there’s great variation in bodies and hormones. Could she have been taking testosterone to boost her performance? Sure. There have been documented cases of female-assigned athletes doing this. Could she also just be another woman whose body is unique, just like all the rest of us? Absolutely.

    There is a natural variance in testosterone production in female-assigned people. If you have a hysterectomy or you are in natural menopause, your testosterone levels drop by 1/3 or more (http://www.project-aware.org/Resource/articlearchives/testosterone.shtml).

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 6:19 pm ¶

33. ashlynn wrote:

    Gosh, we are catching NO BRAKES here. Have hips and an ass, you’re too sexy, oversexualized, an object only useful for gratification. Have a washboard stomach- which, in white mainstream culture, is all but gushed about(see Gwen stefani for the latest)- and some biceps(which women used to PRAISE Madonna for constantly)- and YOU’RE A MAAAAN! PUT HER ON MAURY! As the black woman, the standards continually close in on you with each day. Long hair is feminine, but weave is bad! But rock your hair natural- but only loose wavy curls! THIS IS SOME BS, and we haven’t even BEGUN to get into the whole issue regarding how terribly offensive this is to transgendered culture, the entire LGBT community…ugh ugh UGH

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 7:36 pm ¶

34. 9jah wrote:

    @Lala/27:
    “I haven’t noticed any articles calling Semenya beautiful.”

    Just curious, what exactly does this prove?

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 7:47 pm ¶

35. AJ Plaid wrote:

    @9jah–
    Re-read my statement:

    I think the racism plays out in who did the accusing–an Italian and a Russian, who are read in US and some other parts of the world as eyes as being “white”…

    It’s simply not an issue of “nationality,” as you put it, but how they are played out as far as who’s allowed to have their accusations taken so seriously that the ruling sports board is demanding that Semenya take test to “prove” her femaleness. It has shades, to me, of white women who could say a Black man raped them or that Black men snatched and killed their children with the flimsiest of evidence–their just saying so, much the way one of Semenya’s accusers said she was a man by saying, “Just look at her.”

    I suspect that if the accusers were not white, regardless of their particular nationality or ethnicity, this wouldn’t have gone as far as demands for “sex” testing.

    As for the rest of my comment, I stand by it. Seriously.

    As for your essentializing phenotypes as being “male” or “female,” i.e. broad jaws and that most of the world subscribes to these traits. Are you serious?!?

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 7:55 pm ¶

36. Nadra wrote:

    Lala, I checked out the story on Sarah Gronert. The funny thing is that th Williams sisters came up about three times in the comments, with the posters arguing that they were more manly than Gronert. This comment is a case in point:

    “If Serena Williams didn’t have knockers, she could be playing linebacker for the Giants. Most of the women in tennis are d*kes anyway.”

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 8:41 pm ¶

37. m. wrote:

    This is also misogynist, with a very transphobic bent. Reason being is the debate of whether or not she was truly assigned female at birth, is a “real” woman (with no regards as to what she says), the prying into her past/obsession with her history, et cetera. Oh, and yeah; it’s obviously racist, as well. That’s a given.

    We’ve all seen this before: women of color being masculinized and viewed as threatening or out-of-control, or viewed as hyper-feminine and submissive – not autonomous individuals capable of holding our own. White people and men of color think they’ve got the right to determine what level of femininity we lie on, and it’s not only sexist but also racist. Women of color can never be viewed as just WOMEN the way white women are. We are either too masculine or resigned to some perpetual girlhood. I am infantilized and treated like a docile and naive yet mystical “thing” because of my combined race+gender on the daily, so I know that it is two sides of the same fucked up coin.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 9:13 pm ¶

38. n wrote:

    @T
    Does she look more masculine than a tiny female gymnast? A black one. Minus the sparkly stuff and makeup and hair.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 9:22 pm ¶

39. Carl wrote:

    I agree with “another constellation” that the ending of this piece is disappointing to say the least. When I first read it I thought I must have missed some quotation marks, as it seems so out of character for the rest of the piece.

    Here’s the second-to-last paragraph as written:
    “So, if the runner exhibits typically male traits, it could be the result of her taking performance-enhancing drugs, the Daily Mail posits. Other possibilities include that Semenya has underdeveloped male sexual organs inside of her body or an unusually high number of male chromosomes.”

    Here are the problems I have with it:
    ~ The Daily Mail is a tabloid rag, and you cite it here as if it’s a respected newspaper.
    ~ The “other possibilities” you refer to in the article are attributed to “medical experts” which as far as I can tell is another way of saying “this is wild speculation that we just made up.”

    Here’s the paragraph from the article in The Daily Mail:
    “Now, medical experts are speculating that she may be a quirk of nature – a woman with either under-developed male sexual organs inside her body, or an abnormal number of male chromosomes.”

    When is the last time you heard a medical expert call someone a “quirk of nature”?

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 9:29 pm ¶

40. n wrote:

    @T
    I dont think many of the elite female gymnasts or female divers look extremely dissimilar to men of their own race.

    I was going to compare Caster to one of the Chinese female divers, but that wouldnt work because of the different body types in those sports.
    Even this child, seems to have a slight hourglass shape. Its not sex, but muscular development.

    (http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0cZHeRR4meeLv/340x.jpg)

    But if you compared the female Chinese diver to a Chinese guy and girl, then Caster to a South African Guy and Girl, I think they both vary about the same from the feminine norm.

    (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-08/09/xin_350801090903179006317.jpg) Her face looks like a guy face to me.

    These are Kenyan sprinters and I think all 3 are women.
    (http://www.kenyapage.net/sports/images/chemtai.jpg)
    I think she looks rather male, but she has smaller features and more feminine grooming.
    (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cB2LXaxIvD4/SKVh8rFWWmI/AAAAAAAAB70/LZj9Bxvddls/s400/simpson_jamaica.jpg)

    So yeah, its part of being an athlete. More muscles, less fat.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 9:46 pm ¶

41. n wrote:

    Does anyone else remember the Debbie Thomas era, there was a lot of talk of her being unfeminine back in the day. She was big, bulky, wide nosed and BLACK, unlike Katerina the sultry seductive sexy competitor.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:03 pm ¶

42. tanglad wrote:

    @9jah: “The strict male-female binary, whatever its flaws, is subscribed to by most in the world so how can it be racist? I also don’t agree that categories of maleness and femaleness are per se Eurocentric concepts.”

    An idea can’t be racist if it’s subscribed to by “most in the world”? *eyeroll*

    European colonizers used gender variance among non-western cultures as one of their proofs of European/white superiority. As in, “See these brown and black people! People with male genitals expressing and being socially accepted as women! And for that matter, women acting like men. For their own sake, we must civilize these savages through violent colonization, so they’ll adapt to our European ways.”

    Given that sex segregation in sports–and in so many other activities today–occurs along a strict Eurocentric male-female binary (and excludes people like hijras, kathoey, muxes, bayoguin), it’s not surprising that woc athletes like Semenya are targeted.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:10 pm ¶

43. 9jah wrote:

    @AJ Plaid/32:

    I did read your statement in its entirety. Your further explanation allows me to understand your position better.

    However, I guess I am still at a loss figuring why, without further information, we should freely assume that the accusations were taken seriously because the accusers were white and the accused black. Has a claim been alleged against a white person in similar circumstances and not pursued? Have black claims fallen on deaf ears? A glance at some of the comments suggest these accusations have not been limited to black people.

    Further, I looked at the article you linked to and there is no suggestion that the claims were taken up specifically upon the allegations by the Russian and Italian (not saying this was not the case, just that the Root article does not make that link). Finally, remember that we are dealing with the IAAF, an international body, so I don’t think associations to our racial dynamics automatically apply (fyi looked it up and the prez is black).

    I dont get your critique of the rest of my post. I think you mesh my responses to different questions.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:27 pm ¶

44. dejamorgana wrote:

    I suspect a racial element here, simply because there always seem to be elements of racism in criticisms of black athletes, especially ones who perform highly in events that used to be white-dominated. It’s unbelievable how much crap I hear from white people about the Williams sisters, and I’ve even heard white people talking smack about Tiger Woods’ game. There’s practically nothing you can legitimately criticize about Tiger Woods on the green, so one comment that I’ve heard several times is that Tiger’s golf is just uninspiring, because it’s so technically perfect. Like, yes, he’s so good I’ve just totally lost interest in the game.

    I just can’t believe we’d ever hear similar comments about a white golfer, or that white female tennis players would be criticized for playing too much of a power game. Or that white tennis players’ dads would be criticized for training them too rigorously. And I’m afraid the same kind of thing is happening here. Come on, people. These women are amazing in every way. Too muscular? Too powerful? TOO PERFECT A GOLF GAME? WTF? They’re athletes. They’re AMAZING athletes. Quit trying to tear people down.

    I really feel for Caster Semenya. You spend your entire life training to the best of the best in one thing, you dedicate your existence to that thing, go through all that misery and pain, and you finally do become the very best… and some miserable jealous loser goes and says that you only won because you’re not really a woman.

    That hurts on so many levels.

    Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 10:44 pm ¶

45. Anony. wrote:

    I may be in the minority but I feel this mainly is a sexist issue. Come Olympics time I hear guys going OFF on how ALL the women look, regardless or race or ethnicity.

    I hear men and women call the female athletes butch, dudes, and other not so nice things.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 12:09 am ¶

46. Anony. wrote:

    I just wanted to add I don’t know if the two women accusing her of being male have any racist attitudes. I’m sure there is some racism underlying in the whole grand scheme of things, but like someone said earlier, I feel like gender issues overshadows race here. I know I’m kind of repeating myself here but I just wanted to make my point clearer if it wasn’t.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 12:14 am ¶

47. hola wrote:

    From what I’ve read there is a big suspicion that Caster had been taken either steroids or testosterone, given her masculine appearance and her larger-than-normal testosterone results reported in the British press. Her coach, Ekkart Arbeit, is well known for having given male hormones to female athletes in Eastern Europe, so there’s that. He confessed to doping East German female athletes in the 80s, many of whom became extremely masculinized. There is a book about the controversy called “Faust’s Gold”. Anyway, this man was supposed to not work in sports again but here he is, coaching teens in South Africa! I definitely believe that there is a strong undercurrent of racism here, but the bottom line is that Caster does seem exceedingly masculine, and there is evidence to support the claim that she might have taken illegal substances to improve her performances. Athletes dope all the time. I am afraid that the undue attention she is getting regarding gender and race issues will fall flat if it is revealed that in fact she had been doping or taking illegal substances that would raise her testosterone and make her look masculine.

    From the NY Daily News:

    “Arbeit and other coaches were prosecuted in the ’90s for giving heavy regimens of anabolic steroids to athletes he coached in East Germany’s state-sponsored sports apparatus during the Cold War. Unlike many other coaches and trainers, Arbeit confessed to his role in the program. One of Arbeit’s athletes, Heidi Krieger, accused Arbeit of giving her so many drugs that she was forced to become a man, undergoing sex-change operations and adopting a male identity as Andreas Krieger.
    Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2009/08/25/2009-08-25_caster_semeny.html#ixzz0PM88vFRr“

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 12:54 am ¶

48. hola wrote:

    Also, for whatever reason, the British press seems to have more info on this case than anyone else. Both the Telegraph and the Mirror have great articles on this.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/6078171/World-Athletics-Caster-Semenya-tests-show-high-testosterone-levels.html

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/more-sport/2009/08/24/gender-row-athlete-caster-semenya-has-high-levels-of-male-hormone-115875-21621631/

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 1:01 am ¶

49. Digital Freya wrote:

    I believe the mother is right about them just being jealous. They couldn’t acknowledge the idea that their team lost so they believe there must be some other force at work. They are shameful!

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 3:37 am ¶

50. 9jah wrote:

    @Hola/42:
    “I am afraid that the undue attention she is getting regarding gender and race issues will fall flat if it is revealed that in fact she had been doping or taking illegal substances that would raise her testosterone and make her look masculine.”

    I co-sign. Exactly why we should examine situations critically and not just shoot from the hip every time a black person is involved. It undermines our case addressing subsequent issues of race.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 10:03 am ¶

51. LC wrote:

    “Regardless, this is absolutely horrible for her. How embarrassing.”

    thank you, n., for acknowledging the human being at the centre of this grotesque freak show.

    and thank you, cindy, for taking the words right outta my mouth.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 10:33 am ¶

52. Ain't I an African? wrote:

    Honestly, I do think she seems like a man- her structure, her muscles, her voice and her face. This may not mean that she’s a man, though.

    I do *not* think that she should have been humiliated as she was by the IAAF.

    I don’t see racism here. Maria Mutola, the Mozambican world champion in the 800m is muscular, but no one accused her of being a woman. Kenyan and Ethiopian women routinely win the middle and long distance races without anyone accusing them of being men.

    @ Aubin: I always thought men were on the whole physiologically faster and stronger than women. I believe the categorisation should stay. Otherwise women will always have to work harder like they do in every other sphere of life.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 10:49 am ¶

53. AJ Plaid wrote:

    @9jah–

    No, I read your comment on its entirety as well and did not conflate it with anyone else’s. Several points:

    –I linked to the article to argue the point of white women’s words being taken as truth without evidence. But your question about the link almost begs this point: who brought the complaint to the board in the first place? If I’m getting the sequence of events correct, it was Piccione and Savinova who made the accusations to the press, then the federation followed up with the testing demand.

    –So what the president of the federation is Black himself? Blackness is not a moral identity, in which skin color and culture instantly makes the person bearing the phenotype do the right thing. The president being Black doesn’t stop him from engaging in an engendered racist act, like taking the white athletes’ accusation seriously to the point where he and his group demands Semenya take these “sex” test. Who’s to say he himself may harbor some effed up ideas around Black beauty standards and womanhood and that may be his impetus to either actively pursue this or at least the group he’s leading to do this?

    –As others have pointed out in the thread, the ideas of Western beauty and gender permeate the world, including what is considered “masculine” and “feminine” and has done so for a long time. As tanglad pointed out to you:

    European colonizers used gender variance among non-western cultures as one of their proofs of European/white superiority. As in, “See these brown and black people! People with male genitals expressing and being socially accepted as women! And for that matter, women acting like men. For their own sake, we must civilize these savages through violent colonization, so they’ll adapt to our European ways.”

    Given that sex segregation in sports–and in so many other activities today–occurs along a strict Eurocentric male-female binary (and excludes people like hijras, kathoey, muxes, bayoguin), it’s not surprising that woc athletes like Semenya are targeted.

    –And, though I agree with you that everything that involves a Black person is going to jump off as a racist incident, what some of the commenters and I are saying is we think this particular incident *is,* considering the engendered racist vitriol that Black female athletes have faced regarding their bodies, esp. when they prove to be the best at their respective sports. You apparently feel differently. On this topic, then, we agree to disagree.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 11:38 am ¶

54. Brendan Kane wrote:

    “or that white female tennis players would be criticized for playing too much of a power game”

    Mauresmo?

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 12:21 pm ¶

55. Slush wrote:

    I just read the LA Times about this, and here’s what the IAAF board said:

    “It’s not her fault…It’s a medical issue…The aim of the tests,” he said, “was to discover whether anything gave her an unfair advantage.”

    Now that is some BULLshit! An unfair advantage? That’s what being a world champion athlete is! Sure, they work incredibly hard, and I wouldn’t take that away from any of them. But the fact is, if I worked twice as hard I could never run that fast. Just never. Just not built for it. So Semenya’s faster legs are an ‘unfair advantage?’ Basically the IAAF might as well give up and say it’s all really just a competition of who gets the most athletic genes or something, if that’s what they think this is about. I say, good for her putting up with the constant gender shit all her life and becoming a star athlete.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 2:31 pm ¶

56. jsb16 wrote:

    I think this is largely an issue of sexism, in part in the choice of which events are deemed interesting enough for the media to pay attention to. (When’s the last time you heard results for a double marathon or a 100-miler or a 24hour run, all distances at which women outperform men?) The media likes female athletes who don’t intimidate the (male) couch potatoes who consume the media and/or write the articles.

    But there is also racism involved, if Arbeit’s coaching was overlooked. The press would have crucified any European nation that allowed him to coach.

    Semenya’s being put through a wringer that’s not of her own making because people are greedy, lazy, and stupid. I just hope that her health hasn’t been endangered, either by being given steroids or hormones or by having an undiagnosed medical condition.

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 3:47 pm ¶

57. jen wrote:

    I think this little snafu does something much more illustrative then the textbook pages of an Introduction to Women’s Studies reader: It shows us that biological sex is socially constructed like gender and race. And when bodies transgress the simple formula
    female sex= female gender
    it upsets binaries we use as crutches to generalize, classify, and sort information with. Caster’s body radically threatens ideas of an ‘inherent’ biological sex, an internalized naturalized notion that there are two, and only two, distinctively different sexes that are polar opposities of eachother. Yet Caster proves that not only gender, but biological sex, also sit on a spectrum where really no one can be 100% male and 100% female because of the different levels of hormones present in each person’s bodies.

    This also gives us the oppurtunity to look at how Caster’s body is instantly shifted to scientifc object as the ultimate reigning maker of Truth and final say on the matter. Numreous feminist books come to mind critiquing Science’s historic intrepretation of women’s bodies as deviant, patholgical, emotionally unstable, mentally deficent, etc. Science is not Truth, pre-exsisting discourse, and always shaped by the culture it is concieved in, and so subject to analysis.

    I can’t believe transpersons are subjected to scientifc evaluations of their biological composition as if their body is inherently ‘unfair comeptition’. I would be so scared this would set some sort of “REAL sexes only’ precident excluding transpeople and starting more invaisve “scientifc” assertions of two discrete bilogical sexes.
    Poor Caster!

    Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 10:06 pm ¶

58. 9jah wrote:

    @Tanglad:
    (i) “An idea can’t be racist if it’s subscribed to by “most in the world”? *eyeroll*”

    Ok, to clarify my comment: racism does not exist in a vaccum. It is premised on a race-based distinction that leaves the victim bearing the negative consequences of that distinction. Basically, there has to be an “other” race, for race to be considered a determinant in any analysis. I was not sure how this applied to the male-female binary – but I guess that’s what you’re getting at below….

    (ii) “European colonizers used gender variance among non-western cultures as one of their proofs of European/white superiority. As in, “See these brown and black people! People with male genitals expressing and being socially accepted as women! And for that matter, women acting like men. For their own sake, we must civilize these savages through violent colonization, so they’ll adapt to our European ways.”

    I am not sure this supports your earlier suggestion that categories of maleness and femaleness are Eurocentric, which was what I queried. Many non-euro cultures across the world have held very concrete notions of maleness and femaleness and corresponding attributes for eons. I’ve been in other countries and observed kids sort themselves out into groups of boys and girls to race or some other activity. I don’t think they were employing a “eurocentric” male-female binary.

    I agree that colonialism has worked all sorts of confusion and all around nonsenseness but I don’t know if we can credit them alone for this one.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 1:19 am ¶

59. Fiqah wrote:

    @jen: Cosigning about the fluidity of biological sex versus the often very rigid constructs of gender. I’m actually really glad that you brought up an aspect of this discussion that was kinda being danced around. Thank you.

    @ashlynn, Slush: Yes. Word.

    @AJ Plaid: As always, you are spot-the-hell-on. Cheers.

    Watching all the summer’s race fail, I’ve noticed a larger, deeply upsetting theme. When a person of color beats out a White person, the PoC always – ALWAYS – has an unfair, undeserved advantage. Just of the top of my head, Barack Obama is still framed as under-qualified by conservative detractors, and more recently the brilliant Justice Sotomayor was stuck with the same damning label by her critics.

    And now this world class athlete – competing in what has to be one of life’s only true meritocracies, sport – has an unfair advantage. There’s an odd, backhanded compliment subtext illustrating itself within this controversy. Semenya was far and away superior to everyone she was running against. Her competitors quite literally never had a chance. And that’s what’s pissing them off. ‘Cause no matter what the competition is, it’s only “fair” if White people have a chance. And THAT’S why this is racist, too.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 10:55 am ¶

60. octogalore wrote:

    I think it’s a complicated issue. For some people who are up in arms, racism is surely involved. I think the racism issue was more easily identified in the example re the Williams sisters, though. In this case, the elevated testosterone levels were known before Semenya entered the competition so it was not simply about appearance. And the comments above who mention the increased scrutiny for East German women athletes have a good point. Semenya is in a visual category that is shared by athletes like Heidi Krieger. Contrary to Cindy’s assertion above, Flojo was not flat chested. She and the Williams sisters clearly had female bodies. Anyone accusing them of “being a man” was some combination of racist and sexist. Here, it’s not that clear.

    The combination of the testosterone levels — not just higher but three times higher than the female average, which is not within the range one finds for female athletes — and Semenya’s appearance, I think, give cause for concern along the lines BSK suggests in #25. Do we want XX women to have a shot in elite sporting events like sprinting, or not? Because although Semenya is most likely completely innocent of any deception and certainly didn’t deserve the info of the upcoming testing to be leaked and the ensuing media circus, if the current competitive categories were altered significantly, women born without various male chromosomal traits would simply be locked out of various sports at the elite level.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 12:17 pm ¶

61. tanglad wrote:

    @9jah #58: “I am not sure this supports your earlier suggestion that categories of maleness and femaleness are Eurocentric…. Many non-euro cultures across the world have held very concrete notions of maleness and femaleness and corresponding attributes for eons.”

    Exactly. And non-dominant notions of maleness and femaleness have been othered and suppressed, and violently so. You observed boys and girls in other countries sorting themselves into groups, but how are you privy to how they separate? How they would accept someone like Semenya? In the meantime, the standards that gets used as the norm for determining gender in everything from international sporting events to international beauty contests are the dominant, Eurocentric ones. Which is why I stand by my argument that questioning Semenya’s gender, in addition to the reasons that AJPlaid has laid out for you, have strong racist dimensions as well.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 12:30 pm ¶

62. octogalore wrote:

    Fiqah said: “Cause no matter what the competition is, it’s only ‘fair’ if White people have a chance.”

    The second place winner in the 800m was Janeth Jepkosgei from Kenya. Janeth arguably was most affected. Other competitors included Pamela Jelimo from Kenya and Hasna Benhassi from Marrakesh. The head of the IAAF handling the gender investigation here is Lamine Diack, who is black. He seems legitimately concerned about the breach in confidentiality.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 12:36 pm ¶

63. grateful wrote:

    No matter what the results of these so-called tests say, how does an 18 year old recover? I think all this hoopla about her, and the unprofessional comments by the other runners are racially motivated. I think the Russian woman questioning someone’s gender could be the pot calling the kettle black. Some Eastern European women look quite “tough”.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 12:37 pm ¶

64. JL wrote:

    For those talking about her testosterone level, it is important to note that there’s tremendous variation in testosterone level. She had 3x the normal level for women? That means nothing. The normal level for men is 10x the normal level for women (if we are talking about total testosterone – if we are talking about free testosterone, it’s more like 50x). And there’s so much variation that the men’s and women’s curves overlap anyway. The British papers whose articles I’ve read are disgraceful for having implied that the 3x figure was proof of anything.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 12:53 pm ¶

65. Fiqah wrote:

    @octogalore: Perhaps my earlier comment was unclear. I’ve been following this story for a few days now, so I’m well aware of the fact that Semenya was neither the only Black nor African competitor. From what I can tell, the ONLY competitors who have voiced doubt regarding her sex/gender were Savinova and Piccione. Piccione has been quoted as saying that to her, ” [Semenya] is not a woman.” Britain’s Jenny Meadows, who is White, took the bronze in this race and arguably would have as much to be concerned about as Jepkosgei, but has not resorted to the sour grapes petty griping that Savinova and Piccione have. And I honestly believe that if Meadows had won, this kind of vitriol would never have been thrown at her, ever. And not just because she “looks feminine,” whatever the hell that means. ,The fact is that 18-year-old Semenya is a phenom, and instead of being celebrated for being one of the greatest runners who has ever lived, her sex/gender are questioned, and she is publicly humiliated on the global stage. Her presence in these races has raised the bar for other competitors, but once upon a time, that was the point of the sport…

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 3:39 pm ¶

66. Michelle wrote:

    I agree with everyone who has said that there is a human being at the center of this controversy and that it is wise to keep that in mind.

    That said, I feel like it is bad juju (sorry, I couldn’t think of another word) to bring up FloJo. There were a lot of questionable issues around Mrs. Joyner and her career. Not the least of which was her untimely death at the age of 38. Perhaps we shouldn’t mention her if we really think that Semenya is an innocent victim of her own great performance.

    That said, if there is a scale of genetic sex variance, would it be fair to say that there are more women in 80-90% range, fewer in the middle and fewer on the very end? Would it be fair to say that men shake out the same way? If that is true, I do think that it is healthy for women to strive for physical excellence, without being measured against a male standard.

    Black women have been called masculine and manly looking for centuries, literally. We can’t ignore that as we look at the particular controversy. Martina Navratolova was whispered about behind her back, but she was a respected female tennis player and no one asked her to take any test to prove that was a woman. At least not that we know of. There is clearly a double standard going on with Semenya.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 4:24 pm ¶

67. octogalore wrote:

    Fiqah: thanks for the clarification and I agree that the griping on the part of the other runners was in bad form. My point was just that the reference to white runners having a chance left out the black runner who was in second place as well as the other WOC competing.

    I am confused about the comments that the 3x standard female testosterone levels aren’t troubling. Different labs have varying ranges of what they consider normal with values ranging from the low 200s to over 1200 ng./dl. considered normal for men and from 15 to 70 ng./dl. considered normal for women. So if she’s 3x outside the normal female range, that would be close to if not already in the male range. Nobody has the right to say that because of this she isn’t a woman, and the runner who said this was way out of line. But being a woman in all other respects and being categorized to compete with women in sports are two different things.

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 7:41 pm ¶

68. No, the other left! wrote:

    @AJ Plaid/35: Nick Davies of IAAF claims that they had asked Semenya to undergo sex testing back in July, after she won the African junior championships (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athletics/8212078.stm). If this is true, it appears to me that the process was already underway when the Italian and Russian runners made their complaints.

    @jsb16/56: After quickly looking through the tables of World Best Performances published by International Association of Ultrarunners (http://www.iau.org.tw/upload/statistics/1249988869.pdf), it seems to me that men hold WBPs in all the categories you mentioned, even though there appears to be some age groups where women are indeed outperforming men. Am I missing something? (For example, it is possible that I’m just misreading the stats, because I find the presentation quite confusing.)

    Posted 28 Aug 2009 at 10:26 pm ¶

69. Ain't I an African? wrote:

    interesting article here:

    http://awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Issues-and-Analysis/Caster-Semenya-is-a-hero-but-in-South-Africa-being-different-can-be-deadly-for-a-woman

    Posted 30 Aug 2009 at 4:47 am ¶

70. Sarah wrote:

    http://www.thegrio.com/2009/08/a-south-african-woman-barely.php

    Racism is another hurdle in track star’s gender dispute

    By Marlo David

    “A South African woman, barely out of her youth, faces a team of scientific and medical experts in Europe. She is stripped, both physically and psychologically, before the eyes of the world; eyes that see her body – the flesh that carries the heart and mind of a sensitive woman – as abnormal, freakish and inexplicably different from those produced by a scientific establishment that defines what a “normal” woman looks like. As a result, this woman is poked, prodded and put on display, as a watchful media become more and more infatuated with her difference.
    Though this vignette is reminiscent of the humiliating tale of Caster Semenya, the swift South African runner whose win in the women’s 800 meters at the World Championships in Berlin earlier this month has been marred by athletic officials and sore losers who question her gender status, it is not her story.
    Rather, it is the biography of Saartjie Baartman, the so-called Venus Hottentot, who was stolen from her home in southern Africa in the early 19th century, and placed on display across Europe. Baartman became a public sensation because her full-figured body defied all stereotypes of the European female form. She was treated as though she were not a woman, not even a man, but as an animal, and was displayed, examined, and abused as if she were one until she died five years after her capture.
    Fortunately for Semenya, her celebratory return this weekend to her home in Masehlong province in South Africa, marks a fate far better than Baartman’s, though their stories bear eerie similarities. While the world watches and waits for the results of Semenya’s “gender test,” examinations by a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and specialist in internal medicine, we should be asking ourselves why is any of this is happening in the first place.
    Why, when a woman physically defies physical norms and expectations of the female body, do we question her gender? Strong female athletes force us to question our understanding of what women can do, and what, in fact, is possible. And although there is a long-standing history of gender testing in international athletics of women from various backgrounds – including a number from Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries such as sisters Tamara and Irina Press who won 5 medals in the 1960s which were then revoked when they failed gender tests, and Indian 800 metre runner Santhi Soundarajan who failed a gender verification test in the 2006 Asian Games – the hyper-visibility in Semenya’s case emerges from a difficult racial history.
    The kind of privacy and anonymity that other female athletes have had when under this kind of scrutiny has been stripped away in the case of Semenya. The right to privacy and protection from public spectacle is a privilege not always extended to black women, and Baartman’s story stands as a lingering precedent. So as I look at Semenya’s situation, I cannot help but think her race has much to do with how her case has been handled.
    The strange alchemy of racism and sexism has placed Semenya in the difficult position of stripping down with the world watching in order to claim her greatness. It is a spectacle that black women athletes have fought back against in recent memory by flaunting their femininity – think of Venus and Serena Williams’ chiseled bodies draped in couture, or even Flo Jo’s long thick hair and painted fingernails which seemed to enforce her womanliness despite her muscular body. Semenya refuses these markers of femininity, and she is paying the price.
    I was happy to read that Semenya returned to her home this weekend with the kind of hero’s welcome that she deserves. Usain Bolt, whose record-breaking sprint at the same games, has spent the last several weeks basking in the glow of being one of the fastest men who has ever lived. We do not question his astonishing feat, because we think men can do anything. Semenya, on the other hand, still faces a long journey ahead in order to enjoy this kind of freedom.”

    Posted 01 Sep 2009 at 6:06 pm ¶

71. fishgul69 wrote:

    This is the dumbest situation ever. I agree with Semenya’s parents when they said that jealousy and the very impossible vision of Eurocentric beauty is what drives people to question their daughter’s gender.

    And if it’s proven that she is a woman, then what? I hope there are some sort of legal repercussions that the parents can take against those ignorant women.

    Posted 01 Sep 2009 at 9:53 pm ¶

72. Liz wrote:

    Perhaps Semenya has an endocrine disorder, like PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) or CAH (Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia), both of which can lead to higher testosterone levels without the presence of 1) a Y chromosome (and yes, Just A Thought, it is possible to be XYY or XYYY) or 2) internal male genitalia. Furthermore, PCOS is quite common, affecting about one in every 15 women, and there is no medical test for it (although a blood test will generally reveal higher androgen levels).

    With regard to the question of whether this accusation is racist, it most certainly is. How else to explain the manner in which those other two athletes leveled it? I applaud her for maintaining her dignity throughout such a humiliating (for us, not for her) affair.

    (p.s. octogalore writes: “Do we want XX women to have a shot in elite sporting events like sprinting, or not?” Um, yes. We do. The majority of women are XX.)

    Posted 01 Sep 2009 at 11:01 pm ¶

73. bill01370 wrote:

    I completely agree with anotherconstellation who wrote (#19), “I think it’s racist, sexist, misogonist, and transmisogonist.” Think back to Martina Navratilova and how thoroughly she was criticized for being muscular (whaaaa?!), but also look at the disproportionate numbers of black people who are singled out for this kind of criticism, and finally think on Renee Richards and the ridiculous charges made against her of wanting a sex change in order to improve her tennis rankings (as I remember it – though I was young then). Think, too, of how many times the WNBA publishes pictures of their stars holding their children as opposed to the NBA. No question about it, we have a *lot* of work to do.

    Posted 02 Sep 2009 at 12:25 am ¶

74. Fozia wrote:

    I don’t know Semenya or her life history. In my opinion if she has been spending her life as girl since her childhood and there has not been recent change to becoming a girl to take any type of advantage then it doesn’t mater how she is medically composed of. If she beleives she is a girl she is and that all of us should respect and accept. I am not sure but I have heard that Michael Phelip has some genetic advantage as well in terms of double joint or something on those lines. I don’t think we disqualify atheletes based on any by birth advantage to them. So we should follow that standard in this case.

    Posted 02 Sep 2009 at 10:16 am ¶

75. Ronniebeans wrote:

    While’s it’s an absolute shame that our world has devolved to a level of incivility that allows the callous assertions regarding gender identity to flow in such an fluid manner. It’s as if all filters have been removed and any person can say whatever they want with abandon. She should get the gender test and, assuming her sexual identify is indisputably confirmed, she should use court systems worldwide to sue the hell out of her accusers. I’m certain there are many lawyers who would take on her cause if it results in well deserved negative and unflattering publicity to the accusers.

    Posted 02 Sep 2009 at 12:19 pm ¶

76. keith wrote:

    Caster Semenya birth certificate proves she was at least born a woman. There are other woman athletes that are mannish looking. and nobody seems to say anything about them.The motive seems to be more than a gender issue, racism seems to be the basis of it. Some athletes are juicing up, which could cause her voice to deepen, but it doesn’t mean she’s a man.

    Posted 02 Sep 2009 at 5:17 pm ¶

77. barbara wrote:

    Race has something to do with it because of long rooted stereotypes, but this time I am even more angered that women accused her of being a man. That sets us back so far. She must be a man because she is the better athlete? So men are better than women at running? This is preposterous on so many levels. God bless her and her family.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 1:28 pm ¶

78. ssenfuma tony wrote:

    what i can say, there bias about that young lady,
    because there were not expect any African blood to take all that medal, but for us Africa we have potential.

    Posted 08 Sep 2009 at 1:27 pm ¶