You Run Like a Girl…No Wait, You Don’t
Caster Semenya has a problem. She’s too good a runner to be a girl. The 18-year old women’s 800-meter gold medalist at the world championship track and field competition in Berlin last week has had her medal withheld until an investigation of her sex has been completed.
The reason for the investigation is not clear, the International association of Athletics Federations simply says there is “ambiguity” regarding Semenya’s gender, and her eligibility to compete as a woman has to be determined.
Sex-testing, which, until very recently was required of all athletes competing as women BEFORE being allowed into high-profile competitions like the Olympics, has in the past few years, been relegated to an appeals process after the event rather than a prerequisite to compete. It seemed like progress when this change was made, but now there is the question of who gets put this the appeal and why. All kinds of lovely stereotypes can now rear their heads as some women are considered to be “obviously” female while others are “obviously” suspect. Before you say, “well of course it’s obvious,” consider Androgen Insensitivity, an intersex condition in people of XY chromosal typing who develop as not just women, but often have more stereotypically womanly qualities, like less body hair, better skin, and more voluptuous secondary sex characteristics than average women.
The fact is Caster Semenya has spent her life as a girl and is now a talented young woman with a great career ahead of her. To take that career away because of a test that has changed and shifted in its technique–and thus in its definition of “male” and “female” would be the height of cruelty (supposing such a test disqualifies her, which it hasn’t yet).
Because it’s hard to agree on what counts as an intersex condition, it’s hard to pinpoint the numbers of people born with them every year. But a decent estimate, offered by the Intersex Society of North America is 1 in 1500 births. Parents with babies presenting reproductive anomalies or uncertain gender are often not expecting it and are taken by surprise when it occurs. Because of this, organizations like ISNA have some guidelines for helping parents make a judgement about what to do when a baby is born with an intersex condition. Generally, no surgery is recommended if not necessary from a health standpoint. Instead, a gender is assigned for social purposes and the child is allowed to grow up and gradually make gender and surgery decisions for herself or himself. For ISNA’s guidelines, intersex FAQs and links to support groups, check out their website.
image: Thomas Lohnes AFP/Getty Images
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Tags: Caster Semenya, intersex, intersex society of north america, sex-testing, Shannon LC Cate
8 Comments
Jennifer Margulis commented on Aug 26 09 at 5:11 pmWhat a touchy subject. What is it with sexism in the athletic world anyway? I heard on the radio yesterday that they won’t let women participate in ski jumping even though the woman petitioning has beaten all the men’s records… Maybe that’s why…
Mistress_Scorpio commented on Aug 26 09 at 5:13 pmThis is an interesting situation that I plan to read more about. But it’s pretty cruel to withhold this woman’s medal after the fact.
Sara commented on Aug 26 09 at 10:23 pmThey have handled this case abominably on so many levels. First, they should complete any decision process about eligibility to compete before a competition, not after. Doing it after the fact hurts everyone if the competitor in question wins: that person may be stripped of the medal, the former 2nd-place finisher (now the winner) is denied the glory of being declared the winner immediately after the event, and the whole event is tarnished. Also (and I think more importantly), what an awful betrayal of this poor woman to release this information in such a public way! If there was a question, then it should be answered well before there is any opportunity for a media circus. Now no matter what happens, Caster will suffer. If she is declared “officially female,” she will still have to live with all of the exposure resulting from the mismanagement of the investigation, and if she is declared, what, officially non-female? then she will lose her career AND be publicly humiliated. Any system that can create a situation like this is a faulty system.
Craig commented on Aug 27 09 at 8:12 amThis investigation has more to do with her seven second improvement of her personal best, which was previously set only nine months earlier. The governing body will be focusing its attention mostly on drug or hormone use. Gender verification is only a small slice of the battery of tests needed. Unfortunately, sensationalist accusations surrounding her gender grab the headlines more effectively than questions of doping; a former outrage now dulled by years of pro sports scandals.
Shannon LC Cate commented on Aug 27 09 at 8:32 amThe original article in the NYT says nothing at all about doping, Craig, and in fact, an IAAF representative says there is no suspicion of cheating here.
Marjorie commented on Aug 27 09 at 12:02 pmI object strongly to transgendered women competing in professional women’s sports: Renee Richards comes to mind as someone who I believe benefits unfairly from her original male biology. WITH THAT SAID, gender ambiguity is a whole ‘nuther ball of wax. If indeed 1 out of 1500 babies is born with an ambiguous gender, it strikes me that the ratio might be higher in female athletes. So go ahead and figure out a test that determines what’s fair — but administer it BEFORE the competition, not after. As for whether the gender question is just a small part of the overall investigation, well - I’d love to hear more about that, and shame on the mass media for not looking at the whole picture.
Craig commented on Aug 27 09 at 1:52 pmSemenya’s alleged intersex condition by itself does not account for the dramatic improvements in performance over the past nine months. As the article states, she was not even considered in world class contention until only recently. Typically in sports, improvements this dramatic would be caused by equipment changes, but this theory doesn’t hold true for running.
What is important now is not so much the gender of the athlete, but rather the biological balance of chemicals in the body. As the Strollerderby article explains, intersex conditions vary across a wide ranging spectrum; there isn’t a status quo for chemical makeup. The investigating panel must test the athlete’s hormonal balance over the long term to establish a baseline reference unique to this individual. Once determined, the panel must then compare the baseline to the blood labs drawn around race time. If the race time draws are significantly out of proportion with the observed average, Semenya may be accused of using her intersex condition to obfuscate her body’s natural hormone balance.
Given the HUGE leap in performance, I don’t see how the Semenya could have obtained this recent win without the benefit of manipulation. The scrutiny of this finish is warranted.
Lula commented on Aug 29 09 at 10:18 pmMarjorie, intersex conditions (also called disorders of sexual development, or DSD) are not the same thing as transgender. Intersex/DSD are atypical biological and/or chromosomal conditions affecting biological sex determination. Transgenderism is a state of conflict between a person’s biological sex and their internal gender identity. Semenya is not a biological man who is “living female” - she is a person whose biology does not follow the strict “recipe” that we think of when we think of an XX-chromosomed person with female reproductive anatomy. I don’t know exactly what her DSD is, but she doesn’t have “original male biology” - i.e. she is not MtF transgender.
Craig: To my knowledge, people with intersex/DSD conditions cannot manipulate their bodies at will the way you suggest in your second post. I don’t think this is a question of Semenya “using her intersex condition to obfuscate her body’s natural hormone balance” - I think it’s a question of whether or not her body’s natural hormone balance differs dramatically from that of females who don’t live with intersex/DSD conditions. There’s no manipulation involved in that; she’s simply working with what Nature gave her, and which is therefore beyond her control. If her intersex condition makes her a better athlete, I don’t see that as being any different from whatever already makes natural-born athletes different from people like me who have poor coordination and crappy overall athletic ability.
