Also, you may remember Christina Carr's recent piece about The Gender Investigation of Caster Semenya. Well, given that everyone was so curious about if she was really, a she - it looks like critics can be satisfied now. Megan Carpentier, shares the news from The Sydney Morning Herald, which published the supposed results of the South African runner's International Association of Athletics Federations-ordered gender tests, which apparently show she has the Intersex condition Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
Interesting how it works like that. If a girl is deemed "too good" at sports, she must be a boy? And Goddamn, no one will believe her until science intervenes! But wait - maybe she isn't just a girl, or a boy, maybe she's a little bit of both? It seems that the desperate attempt to reveal Semenya's true identity, the IAAF got more than they bargained for: THE world champion 800m runner Caster Semenya has been revealed to have male and female sexual organs, posing an ethical and political quandary for the sport's ruling body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, and her home nation, South Africa.
Extensive physical examinations of Semenya, who is just 18 and from a remote village in the country's far north, has shown the athlete is technically a hermaphrodite. Medical reports indicate she has no ovaries, but rather has internal male testes, which are producing large amounts of testosterone.
The presence of both male and female characteristics will come as a devastating blow to Semenya, who has fought off snide remarks about her masculine appearance for much of her life.
My question is - why are we so eager to find this out? Clearly if a man was competing in women's events, that might make things unfair because when it comes to physiology men and women are not equal species. But at this point, the woman has been strip searched inside and out - and for what reason? So that she can be told: no boys allowed?
I call BULLSHIT! Now back to bed and off my soapbox.
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