Boys are from Mars, girls are from Venus, and Caster Semenya is from…neither, or both? That seems to be the way the International Association of Athletic Federations chooses to see it, showing that their sensitivity and compassion for individual athletes isn’t exactly what you’d call stellar. The media circus surrounding Ms Semenya, the track star and newly crowned women’s 800-meter World Champion, has the sports world bewitched. Athletes and sports fans around the world are following this story intensely, waiting with baited breath for the next news release. Semenya’s face has been plastered on newsstands and newscasts across the planet. To most athletes, this would be welcome recognition for their achievements. For Semenya however, this public obsession with what should be a private matter must surely be distressing.
The ordeal began when suspicion developed surrounding her gender as a result of rapid physiological changes in the eighteen-year-old runner, changes similar to an adolescent male going through the last few stages of puberty. Her voice became deeper, her musculature and facial structure more masculine, and her running times began to improve at startling rates. At the World Track and Field Championships in Germany last month, just hours before she ran her way to a gold medal and a world record, the IAAF, track and field’s governing body, announced publicly that steps were being taken and tests ordered to address the question of Semenya’s gender.
As an athlete, I feel for Caster Semenya. An athlete’s reputation is their livelihood, and to risk destroying it before knowing all the facts is incredibly irresponsible and insulting of the IAAF. To be sure, any athlete convicted of cheating should be swiftly and harshly punished, along with their sport’s national organization, but not before All the facts are in, but that is not the case here. This constitutes an outrageous violation, not only of an obviously moral matter, but also of the IAAF’s own policy. Any case concerning performance enhancement or athletic misconduct that carries the possibility of disqualification is to be strictly confidential until final results are available. That said, leaked information does happen, especially with high profile cases like this one. The problem is that when information is leaked, or released prematurely, it is impossible to judge its validity. Take the example of Lance Armstrong and the fog of accusations, stories of needles found in trash bins and accusations of cover-ups surrounding the seven-time Tour de France champion. Because of all the misinformation and confusion, it is doubtful that the public will ever get a solid answer as to whether Armstrong has had a clean career or not. Unfortunately dealing with media issues like this are part and parcel of being a world-class athlete. What is different about the Caster Semenya case, however, is that this wasn’t a leaked morsel of information. The IAAF started this media circus themselves, with their own official press release. They did it consciously, fully aware of the potential damage they might cause. They took an intensely private matter and turned it into a public scandal, and that is very troubling. From there, the issue has spiralled into a classic media frenzy, with leaked information and inside sources as news agencies scramble to scoop the story from on one another. None of this is anyone’s business, and yet thanks to the ineptitude of the IAAF and the voracity of the world’s media, it now seems to be everyone’s business.
What is most alarming is that it is not the first time an athlete has been subjected to a public outing like this. In 2006, an Indian runner named Santhi Soundarajan reportedly attempted suicide after ‘failing’ a gender verification test at the Asian Games. Imagine if you had been raised to believe you were a girl (or boy) then were suddenly and very publicly told you were something else. To her credit, Semenya seems to be taking things in stride, at least publicly. She has been calm and collected in press releases, and following the Championships, appeared in the South African magazine You, adorned with the latest female fashions and sporting attractive eyeliner. Say what you will about conforming to female stereotypes; the message is clear, and the resemblance to tennis’ Williams sisters is a little uncanny.
What’s more, and let me be explicitly clear on this note, this is in No Way a question of cheating. Some people have speculated that Semenya knew about her condition, correctly referred to as ‘intersexed’, prior to her competing at the World Championships, and that this constitutes cheating because one characteristic of an intersexed person is very high levels of testosterone, levels that would typically be indicative of pharmaceutical enhancement. Whether that is true or not remains to be proven, but even still I would argue that the case is not so black and white. Semenya is a woman, has been raised as a woman and wishes to remain a woman. She has done nothing to artificially augment what she was born with naturally. Surely the IAAF would not force these kinds of tests on, say, a female high-jumper who was far taller than the average of her competitors. There are many examples in sport, as in all society, of arbitrary classifications. There are weight classes in combat sports and even rowing, because it is accepted that some athletes are naturally larger and stronger than others. Does this mean that a competitor in a higher weight class is more of a man or woman than a smaller athlete? Are these situations really so different from Semenya’s?
Ultimately, this comes down to how we define gender. What does it mean to be a man, or woman? For most people, the deciding factors are seemingly clear and simple, especially given that in everyday life, the distinction is fairly meaningless. As race and class however, the distinction is not so simple. For generations, the definition of ‘citizen’ was considered solid and inflexible, if (by today’s standards) extremely narrow. Still, it was accepted for a long time simply because it was considered to be ‘common knowledge’. Women, people with disabilities, visible minorities, and others were barred from voting simple because ‘that’s the way it is’. Eventually, as a society we came to see the fallacy of this, and we adapted our concept of what it meant to be a citizen. Science has pointed to gender as being a continuum and not the ‘either-or’ that we currently think it to be. Maybe it’s time we began to adapt our thinking around what it means to be male or female. As science continues to unravel the mysteries of the human genome, and we continue to redefine for ourselves what it means to be human, old stereotypes like race and caste have fallen by the wayside.
A scene in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club comes to mind. Tyler Durden, the hero-antagonist, points to a Calvin Klein poster of a massively muscled, sculpted and hairless male model wearing nothing but white briefs and wonders aloud, ‘Is that what a real man looks like?’
As Caster herself has said, “It doesn't upset me. God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I'm proud of myself.” I’d say that’s something we can all learn from.
On the mountain, as in life, that high line might not always be where we think it is, but that shouldn’t stop us from riding it.
