By Lwanga Mwilu
The infamous sex test that has turned the global spotlight on South African athlete Caster Semenya is a negative milestone in our collective history as women world over. It is not just about an 18 year old woman being violated by having her sex questioned in front of the whole world, it is also about a generations- old attempt by patriarchy to define womanhood and ridicule or punish those who do not conform; those who are brave enough to resist the generic categories and write their own life scripts.
I am trying to understand what it is about Caster that makes her a candidate for such suspicion; what makes so many people question whether she indeed is a woman and not a man. Is it, perhaps, because she does not fit the appearance of what ‘common sense’ tells us a woman should look like? Is it because she has a deep voice that does not fit our idea of a woman’s voice? Is it because, her build, strength and sheer speed, do not fit what we know about women and their abilities?
It is unsettling because I see a pattern here: Caster is not the first sportswoman to have such a test, which for some reason is being wrongly referred to as a gender test; gender is a social category, it is sex which is biological and that is what is being tested. I think the discomfort that leads to these tests lies in the fact that these women – both white and black – do not in one way or the other, fit society’s idea of what a woman should look like and be capable of. The women they are, flies in the face of some people’s eternally held beliefs about femininity and masculinity.
I think the main discomfort in the Caster case is that she challenges the patriarchal aesthetic that to be a woman is to be dolled up, coy, weak, fragile, passive, and all manner of traits people consider feminine. There is actually nothing natural about these attributes. They are mere constructs, which in many ways actually constrain us women. Yet society has naturalised them to the point where to not fit in is to deserve to be called deviant. Consider how many names society has for a woman who questions the status quo: frustrated, emotional female, bitter and so on.
Such realities reveal how intolerant society is; how it uses its own preferences as the default position such that anything different is seen as wrong; not up to standard. How un-evolved! Closed mindedness, and its best friend intolerance, is responsible for the suffocation of many progressive perspectives whose only crime is departure from the ‘norm’.
I think what the world cannot forgive also is that Caster is not your typical international star who swears by Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada; or is a mobile advert for L’Oreal, Revlon, Mac you name it. She has not seen the need to manipulate her features: straighten her hair, wax off the facial hair, spot a R3000 manicure and so on. Clearly, she does not fit the TV definition of “hot” and “sexy”, the same portrayals that are being used as a blue print by some people. Consider the scary lengths to which some of my fellow women are going to lose weight, not for health reasons but for purposes of ‘beauty’. Overtime these TV and magazine portrayals of slender, usually light skinned bodies as “hot” and “sexy”
assault those that fall outside these categories. Such that healthy and good looking ‘full’ women suddenly feel the need to ‘shape up’ and trim that excess weight! Excess by whose standard?
For Semenya, the humiliating saga continues with preliminary results suggesting that her testosterone level is three times higher than the average woman contains. So what exactly does this result achieve? I believe that does not make her a man as much as an ‘overdose’ of oestrogen in a man (such occurrences have been proved by Biology) does not make him a woman! And again what does this saga mean for the many intersex people that may be talented enough to enter these competitions, will they be turned away for not being woman or man enough?
Well we will wait and see where all this leads, as for now I will just sit here and try to make sense of the contradictions that attend our reality: the infrastructure and technology around us screams 21 st century yet the mindsets say something totally different.
This is how crazy the western world with their media can intimidate an innocent woman why subjecting her to all those tests i mean not every one might look like beyonce
I think she should have droped her pants to show them that she a girl. This is my question, why didn’t the accept her in the female category in the first place? Now that she is the champion they want to complicate things ………..
If this is the case then Kambongolo is not a man because he is slower than any average man. So I should be a woman and should compete with women.
But he really does look like a dud. the arbs, legs, arms, voice, chest. I understand why they question…..A good sports woman though
I meant “she” in #4, sorry. Yaba!
It is not her looks that have prompted the tests but the high levels of testesterone in her system and the fact that it is not possible for her to have improved her times as she did in such a short time.She works with a trainer who is a known drug cheat -who knows how many steriods he has been giving her
# 1 iwe this has nothing to do with the west. the HEAD OF IAAF is black and have you heard her voice?
Congratultionz Caster on your Gold Medal success. The whole circus about this young lady iz not necessary. Care less and accept that/if she haz male featurez, understand and forgive those who make an issue out of it. Am sure there are a 101 men/ women with female/male featurez and nobody givez a damn! Go on and live life at full crush young woman, regardless of what who thinks.
I have a date with her tonite. I will share with all of you what would have transpired in the nite. I caanot wait to jump in blankets with her!!
Seeker of the truth and justice. I think you are way off the truth. There is a difference between gender testing and drug testing for detecting banned substances like steroids. Semenya is being tested for gender. According to Rob Ritchie, a urological surgeon of Oxford University, in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta — the last Games in which all female athletes were subjected to gender testing — eight female athletes were found to be genetically male but were allowed to compete. Seven of them had androgen-insensitivity syndrome (AIS). This is a case where the testes fail to descend from the abdomen and the genitalia may resemble female genitalia. I think this could fit the Caster Semenya case. I also, wonder why there was no speculation about Maria Mutola whose physique she…
Iwe # 8, high testestorone levels were actually discovered after the suspcions…however, it’s normal for women in their early twenties to have high levels of this hormone….Caster wineee, she has everything male writtrn all over her…..anyway, all the women she ran with looked like men, lol!
PLEASE TELL ME . WHY NOT SEND HER WITH A FEMALE OFFICIAL TO CHECK HER WOMAN/MAN HOOD? WE KNOW WHAT A MAN OR WOMAN HAVE BETWEEN THEIR LEGS
i am so confused about the issue of CASTER. Then what if she has more male chromosomes than those of a female?
#13, if Caster has more male chromosomes (xy karyotype) rather than the female xx, it means that that would giver her an unfair advantage over other female runners because men generally tend to be stronger than females. She may have some outward female genitals but no inner female organs such as uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes etc….
Caster may have a condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.Its not a matter of asking her to drop her pants and check .AIS means she is genetically male but has female features.Its nothing to do with being anti feminist as the author may imply.The IAAF however did not handle this well. Why did they wait till she was a potential gold medalist till they made noise about it.If she lost no one would have bothered. Let our African sister be.How many of us know our karyotypes anyway.For all we know there may be alot of he-shes out there.
Yaba! to me she is a man and not a woman. Send women officers to examine her inside.
Good looking young man!
Would we be talking about this girl she didnt win ? They didint test her at he begining cos they thought she had no chance of winning a medal.