Update: Caster Semenya Gets Strip Searched Inside & Out

by Jen Nedeau · 2009-09-11 22:33:00 UTC
Topics:

You may remember Christina Carr's recent piece about The Gender Investigation of Caster Semenya.

Well, given that everyone was so curious about if she was really, a she - it looks like critics can be satisfied now. Megan Carpentier, shares the news from The Sydney Morning Herald, which published the supposed results of the South African runner's International Association of Athletics Federations-ordered gender tests, which apparently show she has the Intersex condition Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

Interesting how it works like that. If a girl is deemed "too good" at sports, she must be a boy? And goddammit, no one will believe her until science intervenes!

But wait - maybe she isn't just a girl, or a boy, maybe she's a little bit of both? It seems that the desperate attempt to reveal Semenya's true identity, the IAAF got more than they bargained for:

THE world champion 800m runner Caster Semenya has been revealed to have male and female sexual organs, posing an ethical and political quandary for the sport's ruling body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, and her home nation, South Africa.

Extensive physical examinations of Semenya, who is just 18 and from a remote village in the country's far north, has shown the athlete is technically a hermaphrodite. Medical reports indicate she has no ovaries, but rather has internal male testes, which are producing large amounts of testosterone.

The presence of both male and female characteristics will come as a devastating blow to Semenya, who has fought off snide remarks about her masculine appearance for much of her life.

My question is - why are we so eager to find this out? Clearly if a man was competing in women's events, that might make things unfair because when it comes to physiology men and women are not equal species. But at this point, the poor girl has been strip searched inside and out - and for what reason? So that she can be told: no boys allowed?

Jen Nedeau Jen Nedeau is a media relations professional and a writer based in New York City.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Friday Femme Fatale: Remembering 9/11 & What It Means Now
NEXT STORY:
LEGO Agrees to Meeting After 50,000 Denounce Selling Out Girls

COMMENTS (13)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.