At the 2009 World Championship in August, Caster Semenya, an 18-year-old girl from South Africa won the gold medal in the 800 meters race. She has consistently been at the top of her field, before she even got to the national level. Her record breaking races along with her appearance have been stirring up rumors for some time now. She is quite muscular, even for a runner, has broad shoulders, a deep voice and a strong jaw. The women she has competed against believe Caster has a unfair advantage because she "runs like a man".
After her win this summer, The International Association of Athletics Federations ordered for her to undergo gender testing. These tests are pretty extensive and involve a physical examination of the genitals, chromosome testing, and X-rays. For an 18-year-old, this can also be quite embarrassing. In the past, gender testing was mandatory because it was common for men to try to pretend to be women and compete in female categories. But back then the only form of testing they did was a visual examination, which Caster would have past. She did have to go through all these tests, and if they found out she was in fact male, they would take away her medal and prize money.
The I.A.A.F. decided to not reveal the results of the test and let Caster keep her first place title. Unfortunately a couple of different sources have leaked the results to the media which say that she is physically female but doesn't have a uterus or ovaries but instead has internal testes and a high rate of testosterone. Physicians say that there are many different types of genetic gender disorders and that they are not as uncommon as we might think.
But for Caster, the whole world now knows the very personal details of who she is, which is a violation of privacy that can't be undone. If it is unfair for Caster to be competing against other women, because of her extra testosterone, then how should the I.A.A.F. resolve this issue? It's not fair for trans-sexed people to not be allowed to compete at all, so should we adapt our methods of categorizing sexes? Should we split up the competitions by weight instead?
here is the very long but extensive article from The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/30/091130fa_fact_levy
a shorter one from The New York times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/sports/20runner.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/19/caster-semenyas-gender-te_n_363617.html
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This situation really troubles me. While I believe that Caster Semenya has an unfair advantage over the other "female" runners, her human rights were obviously violated. I believe that the main problem is the structure of sports. Technically the race Caster ran in was meant for women- this meaning that all the runners were on the about the same biological/hormonal level where there was no unfair advantage(ex. the use of steroids is not allowed so what about different hormonal levels?).
ReplyDeleteShould there be a third category? This idea seems pretty ridiculous but at the same time almost necessary if we want to be "fair". Everyone deserves to compete and play their sport that they have trained so hard for.
The thing is, Caster's case is most likely not the first one. It is highly plausible that amazing ancient athletes had some biological abnormality that caused them to be such great atheletes but were never found out about because of the lack of the technology we have today.
I was thinking a lot about this issue and I don't think that creating a third category would be fair. I think the races should be based on the testosterone levels of the athletes. If they had mandatory testing of testosterone levels before each race, they would also be able to catch people using steroids more easily.
ReplyDeleteCommenting on the human rights aspect of the story, I think her rights were definitely violated. This story has gotten so much coverage that it will be hard for Caster to lead an ordinary life. I definitely believe that, in some form, humans have a right to privacy, and Caster's rights were definitely not respected.
I agree that her right to privacy was violated. I also don't believe that there should be a third category. That just seems to difficult to implement and too politically correct.
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