There have only been a few cases of androgynous men competing as women in international competition. The most notorious of course was Polish sprinter Stanislawa Walasiewicz who won the women’s 100m at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, but was found to have a “partially developed male genitalia” after her death in 1980.
With all of the testing and media scrutiny today, however, it seems incomprehensible that anyone would even attempt, let alone get away with, such a gender-bending feat. Yet this is precisely what many are accusing South African Caster Semenya, 18, of doing on Wednesday – after she blew away the field in the women’s 800m final at the World Track and Field Championships in Berlin.
In fact, reports on this controversy – mostly propagating doubts about Semenya’s gender – replaced the superhuman performance of Jamaican Usain Bolt as the talk of these championships … for a day at any rate.
Admittedly, after being awed by Semenya’s performance (which I saw when the race was rebroadcast on Wednesday night), I too became transfixed by her appearance as she celebrated her victory. I even remarked, purely in jest, that if her coach had instructed her to shave her armpits, legs and facial hair, she might have clocked an ever faster time….
But it never occurred to me that I had just watched a man in drag racing against women. This is why I was so stunned the next morning by reports that complaints about her performance at a competition just weeks ago compelled IAAF officials to order her to take a gender test. And that it was only because the results would not be confirmed for several more weeks that they allowed her to compete at these championships.
What I find stupefying, however, is that the complaints relate entirely to her “muscular appearance.” After all, I took this for granted; not least because she is no more muscular than many of the other female athletes.
Moreover, given how pervasive steroids are in sports today, I would have understood if the complaints were that only testosterone could account for the sudden improvement in her performance and for her muscular appearance; not to mention her facial and body hair.
But the accusation that she might be a he, strikes me as not only farfetched but also unnecessarily cruel. For let us not forget that this is an 18-year old being held up to this scrutiny, which has now robbed her of the thrill of victory and heaped unprecedented embarrassment upon her and national shame upon South Africa. And only God knows what long-term psychological damage she will suffer…
If you go at my home village and ask any of my neighbours, they would tell you that Mokgadi [Caster Semenya] is a girl… They know because they helped raise her. People can say whatever they like but the truth will remain, which is that my child is a girl. I am not concerned about such things.
Meanwhile, this is how Caster’s mother Dorcus Semenya reacted, suggesting that questions about her daughter’s gender are “motivated by jealousy.” I agree.
Frankly, I don’t know why the IAAF could not have disposed of these complaints by just having a nurse examine Semenya; since, for the purpose of sports competition, genitalia should be determinative.
After all, it’s doubtful that she’s had a sex change. And even if the test finds abnormalities in her chromosomal and hormonal makeup, this should not disqualify her gender identity … or her performance.
That said, it would be remiss of me to end this commentary without hailing the remarkable accomplishment of Jamaican athletes who outperformed all others, including the Americans, in all of the marquee events of these championships.
Of course, what else can I say about Usain Bolt; except to note that he vindicated my prediction over that of Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago. Specifically, in his capacity as television commentator for NBC and Versus TV, Boldon predicted that Bolt would not set another world record in yesterday’s 200m final because he had neither the motivation nor the competition to do so.
By contrast, here’s what I predicted:
[H]e seemed to run yesterday as fast as humanly possibly (in this era) … without the aid of performance enhancing drugs. And, having lowered the record by the greatest margin ever in one race (from 9.69 to 9.58 [or by .11]), I doubt he’ll ever cross the 100m finish line in 9.40.
Though, in the meantime, I fully expect him to lower the world record he set in the 200m in Beijing (of 19.30) by a similar margin later this week.
[Usain Bolt: an even faster fastest man on the planet, TIJ, August 17, 2009]
In fact, Bolt crossed the finish line in 19.19, lowering his world record by .11 seconds – just as I predicted. I think I’ll play the lottery this weekend…
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Usain Bolt: an even faster fastest man…
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