Caster Semenya
15 Nov 2009 Leave a Comment
in Human Rights Tags: Caster Semenyer
In an article in the Guardian based on a series of visits to her training camp in Pretoria, the 18-year-old South African admits: “It’s not so easy. The university is OK but there is not many other places I can go.
“People want to stare at me now. They want to touch me. I’m supposed to be famous but I don’t think I like it so much.”
So much misinformation has been given about this woman and such an appalling amount of negative Press that she could be forgiven for disappearing off the planet.
Society has a desperate need to make her fit into a binary gender. “She cant be a woman so she must be a man” Has it ocurred to them that she is a woman albeit she appears to have been misfortunate enough to have been born into a female body that produces an unusually high level of testosterone?
She happens to have been born with a difference or so it seems. She has more testosterone than the average woman but that doesn’t make her a man. The real question is “Why can’t people accept that she is different?” This is not the same question as whether she should compete equally with female athletes. What the authorities need to do is find a way of regulating the competition with what they currently call ‘gender testing’ Her gender is not in question she is female. If the International Olympic movement came up with a measure for all athletes which determined a level of testosterone which was acceptable then Caster and others like her would be spared the indignity of being stigmatised as a freak which she is not.
