Caster Semenya - Is She or Isn't She

In a previous post, I discounted the idea that Caster Semenya, 18, from South Africa (the women's 800-meter world champion), could be a hermaphrodite .....well I was wrong.

Australian media claimed to have obtained leaked details of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) tests. The Sydney Daily Telegraph said these showed that the 800-metre world champion has a chromosomal abnormality that means she has no womb or ovaries but internal testes that produce the male hormone, testosterone.

The IAAF has refused to confirm or deny the veracity of the article. However, IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said: "The statements should be treated with caution as they are not official statements by the IAAF."

"We have received the results from Germany, but they now need to be examined by a group of experts and we will not be in a position to speak to the athlete about them for at least a few weeks.

"After that, depending on the results, we will meet privately with the athlete to discuss further action."

The IAAF has confirmed it will not comment further on Semenya until after the IAAF council meeting in Monaco on 20-21 November. That has done nothing to quell the firestorm of speculation in the media and around the world.

Many are questioning why this issue was not resolved before allowing Semenya to compete on the world stage. Her country of South Africa is solidly behind her, even the President, Jacob Zuma, has issued a statement in her defense.

Some have taken issue with the term "hermaphrodite" being used to describe Caster Semenya and suggest that a more appropriate word would be "intersex" or more specifically Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS).

What this means is that even though outwardly a person may appear to be female, there are certain male characteristics, like internal male sex organs and testosterone production, that they also carry. One serious side effect of this condition is the likelihood of developing cancer.

....AIS people typically self identify as female. They can not have offspring. Sexual intercourse is limited because of the 'blind vagina" but this is fixable with surgery. Removal of the testes and 'fixing' of the blind vagina are not normally considered "gender reassignment." The testes removal is more of a life and death thing ... there is a high risk of cancer without that surgery.

Discussion of AIS may seem very clinical and abstract but it bears remembering that it affects real people, like Caster Semenya who is only 18 years old, still a teenager with most of her life ahead of her, and probably did not know before now that she had such a condition.

All her life she considered herself to be female, just like other females; her family considered her to be a normal female child; she interacted with others around her as a female; she was a female athlete competing with other female athletes. There is bound to be a tremendous psychological impact on discovering that she is not a normal female and moreover knowing that the world does not see her as a normal female. She may even be prevented from competing with other females in the future.

According to media reports Caster has gone into hiding. She is scared, sad and devastated by reports that she is a hermaphrodite. Some fear that she may be suicidal.

The chairman of South Africa's Parliament's portfolio committee on sport and recreation, Butana Komphela said.

"She is like a raped person. She is afraid of herself and does not want anyone near her. She has been placed on an altar for all the world to see. If she commits suicide, it will be on all our heads."

"I spoke to her today. She says she is okay. But I can hear that she is disguising a lot of agony. She is traumatised by all of this. The best we can do is protect her and look out for her during this trying time," Komphela said.

Regardless of the mental trauma that Caster must be experiencing, there seems to be an effort to capitalize on her by the Athletics SA (ASA).

ASA boss Leonard Chuene said that they would soon start accepting bids for a management team for her. He said the ASA was protecting her as a brand but denied that they were cashing in on the publicity.

"She is a brand and a champion of the world. There is nothing sinister about protecting her from ambush marketing or hijacking. There must be an appearance fee for her to appear on magazine spreads. Those people who want to use her must pay."

Hopefully this is not just another example of people making a business out of other people's misery. Hopefully someone is looking out for Caster Semenya's best interests.

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Caster Semenya the Controversy

Call me naive, trusting or even gullible but I really did not think that proving one's gender was a complicated process. If in doubt check the genitalia - yes, I've heard of hermaphrodites but they don't apply in this case - boys have penises and girls have vaginas. It should not be more complicated than that.

However in the case of Caster Semenya, it appears to be very complicated, so complicated in fact that she has been required to undergo a series of tests to determine her gender. The result of these tests is important because it will determine whether she can keep the gold medals she has already won and whether she can continue to compete as a girl on the international stage.

[audio http://shadmia.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/caster-semenya.mp3]

Caster Semenya is an 18-year-old South African runner who thoroughly dominated the competition and easily won the women's 800m race at the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin on Aug. 19th, 2009. But her muscular build and deep voice have raised doubts about her eligibility to compete as a woman.

Preliminary test results have shown that Caster Semenya has three times the normal female level of testosterone, which is the biggest difference between males and females.

Sex verification in athletics was introduced in 1966, when female competitors had to stand naked in front of a committee and were subjected to inspection of their external genitalia. The so called Nude Parades were later replaced by a chromosome test, which also proved to be limited. These days, the tests consist of genetic, gynecological, psychological, and endocrine tests. Tests are only done when suspicion or challenge arises.

Caster Semenya returned to her native South Africa after the competition to a hero's welcome. Her supporters made thinly veiled charges of racism against the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations), the organization performing the gender tests.

South Africa’s Athletics president Leonard Chuene claims: "There is no need to worry about ‘other people’s tests." He spoke out at a press conference saying:

"Yes, indeed, she's a girl. We are not going to allow Europeans to describe and define our children."

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, ex-wife of former President Nelson Mandela, also spoke out.

"To the world out there, who conducted those pseudo-tests to test our gender, they can stuff their insult," she said. "This is our little girl, and nobody is going to perform any tests on her. We have defeated difficult situations in the history of this country. Don't touch us."

Even South African President Jacob Zuma and many other organizations criticized the IAAF for the testing and insisted that Semenya will not be stripped of her gold medal in the 800-meter world championship. The massive outpouring, along with a Facebook fan page with more than 45,000 members, underscored the raw nerve exposed in South Africa by questions about Semenya's sex.

"Ms. Semenya has also reminded the world of the importance of the rights to human dignity and privacy which should be enjoyed by all human beings," President Jacob Zuma said. "In recognition of the supremacy of these rights, we wish to register our displeasure at the manner in which Ms. Semenya has been treated."

Semenya, who comes from a poor rural background in Limpopo province in northern South Africa, has grappled with the consequences of looking boyish all her life. She grew up with four sisters and a brother in the dusty village of Fairlie, about 40 miles from the nearest town.

Being a girl in an African village meant girls' chores: fetching water, washing dishes, cleaning the house. But in her free time, she ran off to play soccer with the boys.

The newspaper Beeld quoted high school principal Eric Modiba as saying that Semenya always wore pants instead of skirts, played rough-and-tumble with the boys and that he didn't realize she was a girl until she was in the 11th grade.

If the teasing hurt her, she kept the pain hidden, said her grandmother Maputhi Sekgala. Her mother, Dorcas, watched the world championship race on television, shedding tears of joy when Caster streaked to victory.

Semenya's father, Jacob Semenya, pleaded: "I wish they would leave my daughter alone."

"She is my little girl. I raised her and I have never doubted her gender. She is a woman and I can repeat that a million times," Semenya told a Sowetan newspaper.

Dorcas Semenya, 50, is fierce in Caster's defense. She refused to let the questions about her daughter's gender dilute the moment of triumph.

"She's a girl. I'm the mother of that girl. I'm the one that knows about Caster. If they want to know about Caster, tell them to come to me."

"They're jealous of my daughter," she said. "It's the first girl in the black people doing such things. That's why they say those things."

Nick Davies, spokesman for the IAAF, said it was clear that whatever the results of the gender tests, "clearly it was not her fault."

"It's a medical issue. You're talking about someone's life. She was born, christened and grew up a woman," he said in an interview with the BBC. The aim of the tests, he said, was to discover whether anything gave her an unfair advantage.

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