Notes of Concern…
…Jackson Blair
SEXUAL ASSIGNMENT
Champion runner Caster Semenya from The Republic of South Africa is at the center of a gender controversy within the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Caster competes as a female athlete. She is very male in appearance and that caused demands for an investigation when she so completely defeated her opponents in competition.
It has been announced that tests show Caster to be a hermaphrodite, a person with sexual characteristics of both a male and a female. It is said she cannot have children, does not have a womb, and has internal male organs.
There are a lot of reasons people get upset about anything that smacks of cheating in the Olympics as well as in the International Association of Athletics Federations. I would count myself as one of them.
The Greeks saw sport as a pure thing. It was to be one person, unaided by drugs, competing simply with the gifts his body could put forward in the way of exercise and strategy and determination. It was all good. It was noble. It was a source of great pride for the individual and for the nation state.
Well, that does not accurately describe the Olympics of today or the other high level international competitions, like The World Athletics Championship in which Caster competed.
For years nations have taken young children from their homes and put them in special academies to “grow Olympians.” Other nations have aided and abetted questionable tactics employed by their Olympic teams.
Yet other nations actually punished Olympians if they did not perform adequately, most recently the infamous Hussein brothers in Iraq. The stories are many and they are all sordid.
It would be fair to assume that national pride has been the excuse for a great many changes in what the Greeks thought worthy of praise.
Countries regularly use what we would call “professional” talent when fielding some teams. “Amateur” is a very flexible designation these days in athletic speak!
So does Caster deserve to be thrown in with that group?
I think that remains to be seen, but I have some doubts.
When Caster was born in South Africa she faced many challenges, the least of which might have been whether she would ever compete in international athletic competition.
No one plucked her from her bassinette and sent her off to practice running for medals. She probably didn’t have a bassinette or any other western baby furniture.
That the doctors who treated her even knew she had internal male organs might be questioned. That she was treated by any doctor at birth is unlikely. Her delivery might well have been in the hands of a midwife.
The level of medical advice available to poor South Africans of Caster’s age was, at best, basic. MESAB (Medical Education for South African Blacks) is an organization that has for years tried to raise money to educate black doctors in South Africa, a place where 90% of the people were black but most of the doctors were white.
So Caster’s family saw female organs.
No doctor is reported to have discussed any ambivalence on that designation at the time.
Surprise. They raised her as a girl.
Certainly, as she aged it became obvious that she didn’t look very female. Nevertheless, she acted female, she saw herself as female, and she had no reason to believe she was not female.
Her birth situation brought her fame as an athlete. Her special combination of features, internal and external, made her very competitive against other girls. When she began to really excel in this arena, competitors began to question her right to be there.
At the time of writing this article, no credible charge has been leveled against anyone on the South African committee that they had any knowledge of her questionable body composition.
Perhaps it is fair to say that someone who has experienced this sort of birth confusion cannot be permitted to participate in international athletic games. There is no question she has an advantage over the female athletes and she is possibly not strong enough to compete against male athletes at this level.
However, is it not sad that this woman of Africa who went to the Games believing she was female and a pretty good athlete now stands unmasked before the world as neither female or male, that her family is ashamed and frightened, and that in a society that frowns on any sort of irregularity or deviation she is probably destined to live out her life as a bizarre twist of the natural order.
If she knew her sexuality when she entered the competition, then my concern is misplaced.
If the South African athletic committee knew or suspected, and did nothing to make a determination prior to the games, then my concern for what is happening to her is misplaced.
If she went to the games as an enthusiastic female member of the South African Athletic Team, and through the success of her athletic efforts she became a national story, the results of which were embarrassing and incredibly hurtful, then we should all be concerned as well as sympathetic.
The issue is not whether South Africa brings home a gold medal.
The issue is whether this young woman will suffer the rest of her life because of the insensitivity of the world and the fickleness of nature.
And the overriding issue for sport is whether some other young woman, who does not have a confused sexual identity, was robbed of her gold medal because of this tragedy.
This will not be seen as one of mankind’s finest hours.
