Olympic Bodies: Where are the limits of sex?
The facts of Semenya
Mokgadi Caster Semenya (born in January the 7th, 1991 in Ga-Masehlong, Limpopo Province) is a South African athlete. It is a middle distance runner who won at 800 meters at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games. In the 2009 African Junior Championships racing she won the 800 meters and 1500 meter marks respectively with 1:56.72 and 4:08.01. Her time in the 800 meter was a world record in 2009. She was also national record and championship record by nearly four seconds. Semenya simultaneously beat Senior and Junior records of South Africa won by Zelda Pretorius with 1:58.85 and 2:00.9 respectively by Zola Budd. She also won the gold medal in 800 meters at World Athletics Championships in Berlin in 2009 with a time of 1:55.45 in the finals, getting back the best time of year.
The doubt about Semenya
After those successes, other brokerages raised their suspicions about the sex of Semenya and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) made public that it had requested a gender verification test in the weeks before that Semenya won the medal, because the results of tests performed in South Africa prior to the World Championship showed testosterone levels three times above normal.
Apparently, the authority with which Semenya won the final ahead of the Kenyan Janeth Jekgosgei, defending champion, and Jennifer Meadows of Britain are raising doubts about their femininity. The winner got more than two seconds in a relatively short test to Jepkosgei (1:57.90) and Meadows (1:57.93).
The gender control established by the IOC in Mexico 1968, given the suspicions that inspired the athletes of the East in the years that saw the widespread use of synthetic testosterone, ceased to be compulsory from Sydney in 2000 for reasons of privacy protection and doubts about the validity of systems. At the beginning, the control consisted on a mere anatomical examination. Subsequently, we used an analysis of chromosomes, then introduced which is still in force, the SRY, which is practiced only in exceptional cases for a single essential gene for maleness.
The IAAF asked the national federation of the athlete to provide information, to rumors that said she was a hermaphrodite, with male and female attributes. "After her sensational performance in the Africa Youth Championship, where she improved her mark of 800 and 1500 meters, there are rumors and speculations about it," said Nick Davies, IAAF spokesman. "We have tried to be in touch with the South African federation to know if they have documents that establish her sex and they are trying to achieve it, but we must know it is a complex process that needs time and that is expensive," he added. "It's a matter we take seriously," Davies said.
According to the IAAF spokesman, the constitution of this report, including evidence of experts, psychologists and gynecologists, needs several weeks. "We didn’t have at that time any definitive authorized element for her not to participate in 800 meters," Davies said. Semenya, with 18 years old, caused a sensation at the World Youth Bambous (Mauritius), in late July and early August, winning the 800-meter trials with a time of 1:56.72 and the 1,500 meters with 4:08.01.
The South African ex football player, where she played on the left side demarcation, had said on Monday that if they the bad comments went on, which she considered hurtful, she would, could leave athletics. When she caught the South African flag and ran part of the stadium to celebrate her victory, part of the stadium gave her a resounding whistle.
But more surprising than that is still the assertion of the newspaper (which had previously published the German 'Bild') that the infamous Ekkart Arbeit, 'famous' for priming of male hormones to athletes from the former East Germany, is the one behind Semenya’s treatment, as the coach of the athletes in the country. Arbeit was the pitching coach of East Germany from 1982 to 1988, a period in which Heidi Krieger, weight thrower, was so treated with male hormones that ended on changing sex.
The Federation of South Africa, through its head of press, Ethel Manyaka, has announced that they would not have sent to a World Cup an athlete without being sure of her gender. For Manyaka, other athletes have masculine appearance and do not generate doubt, like Maria Mutola (Mozambique), Pamela Jelimo (Kenya), Ariane Friedrich (Germany), and some Russian and Ukrainian women.
The case stirred various sectors in South Africa, which defined the event as "racism of the highest order". For Komphela, it was a humiliating action of sexism and racism made by the IAAF. According to the politician, there were many white athletes who had masculine features that were never submitted to a test. "This shock was generated only because she is black and outpaced all the European rivals," he added.
The reasons
This news presents us with on one hand the authoritarianism which implies the division of humans into men and women, oppression and discrimination that implies especially subjects and bodies that cross the fees charged, as in the case of athletes, by the same exercise and the preparation you should have. In addition, we come back to the prejudice against women who stand "that sure is a man, as if women had no worth, nor the ability to achieve success in sports and breaking world records. It revives the male fantasy that women are men that stand in disguise, who unable to shine among men prefer "the easy success" that their condition of males is naturally given by women.
There have been cases of women who have left the chromosome count as men and have been deprived of their awards when months after they gave birth. These bodies show us that it is not possible to keep that indivisible line between masculine and feminine and also a right of athletes to compete without airing what's below their waist, whether men, women, intersex or whatever.
But this emphatic conception between feminine and masculine, which is more ideal than real, also prevents people from participating as transsexuals undergoing through hormonal treatments, because intersex people in the imagination of the leaders would have an advantage over the other competitors.
What is happening with Semenya should suggests us a reflexion about the division between men and women, and if it is not time that the powers are open and free instead of inviting the suspicion of humiliation or doubt.
Sources:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundodeporte/2009/08/19/masdeporte/1250680742.html
http://www.marca.com/2009/08/24/atletismo/1251121323.html
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/deportes/duda/Semenya/elpepidep/20090819elpepidep_6/Tes
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundodeporte/2009/08/21/masdeporte/1250878812.html
