South Africa’s newspapers and websites are filled with the success of young 800m gold medallist Caster Semenya. After years of fairly apathetic athletic achievements, South Africans should be basking in the extraordinary win from this young, relatively unknown runner.
But we’re not. A gender test has been called by the International Association of Athletics Federations, and Caster ran her race last night under a cloud of media speculation and commentary.
The situation raises a host of issues. Society’s growing understanding of gender complexities highlights how polarising our society is. That if you don’t fall into the categories of man or woman, you can be seriously excluded from mainstream life. Establishing someone’s gender is an incredibly complex process, one which I don’t pretend to understand.
But to try and solve these issues in the international spotlight at the World Champs, is an extremely difficult and I imagine humiliating situation for the young teenager.
What this situation has also flagged up is how inappropriately our Athletics body has handled this situation. Athletics South Africa (ASA) has failed to protect Caster by not actually facing up to the questions that were raised when she blazed onto the athletics scene several months ago. In her first big races Caster shaved seconds off her time, breaking longstanding records. This surely is a standard alarm bell in athletics, where everyone is assumed to be bending rules until proven otherwise?
Comprehensive testing should have been done at home in a supportive environment, so that when the questions were invariably raised in Berlin, ASA could respond clearly and confidently.
Because of ASA’s failings to foresee and manage this problem, I imagine because of management’s euphoria at having a rising young star, Caster’s entry into international competition has been severely tainted.
Whichever way this situation resolves itself (it becomes a decision on whether Caster has unfair advantage) the point stands that society is not geared to encompass people outside of our standard male/female gender definitions.
And that if we’re competing at an international level, our governing bodies must respond at this level: understanding and working with international regulations so that they can protect the athletes they’re appointed to protect and support.
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