Sports and sex
The hubbub about Caster Semenya has been percolating at the back of my mind, and today I was reminded again about it because of an email from the National Sexuality Resource Center. Caster's the South African runner who's shown a great deal of promise and won the 800m at the World Championships. Her biological sex has been questioned on the basis of her (admittedly impressive) musculature and probably also because of her general androgynous appearance. She's been subjected to hormonal and chromosomal tests, which will apparently take awhile to confirm her sex. Now South Africa's in an uproar claiming racial motivation, and Caster feels humiliated and might skip the awards ceremony in protest.
Here's some of the text from the NSRC email:
Her family and her community support her, but Caster has been shamed as an athlete because she doesn’t look the way a woman is “supposed to” look. And now the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is making her undergo invasive tests to tell her whether she deserves her gold medal.
XX - why?! Why does Caster have to endure this violation of her personal privacy just because she looks different? Why does the IAAF get to decide who she is? I’m outraged. Are you? Then tell the IAAF to stay out of Caster Semenya’s pants.
I guess my answer to the NSRC would be - no, I'm not outraged. If someone chooses to compete for the title of 'Fastest Female Runner of the 800m' then I think they should have to expect to prove the 'female' as well as the 'fastest'. If sports are going to be divided by sex then this is the unfortunate and inevitable result.
Having said that, I think that Caster's case and some previous confirmed cases show that ambiguous and intersex individuals have caused, and will continue to cause, periodic debates among elite women's sports. And it's really embarrassing and enraging to see the misogyny still present in women's sports, as with comments by Italy's Elisa Cusma:
"These kind of people should not run with us. For me, she is not a woman. She's a man."
Sorry bitch, you aren't the one who gets to decide the sex or gender of other athletes.
But I can't see a clear way forward. Sports will continue to be divided along sex lines, which I think is very positive from the standpoint of the vast majority of women. But then the question of sex will continue to be arguable - is someone a female if she has XY chromosomes but has androgen insensitivity syndrome, is someone a female if she was born XXY but had her external genitalia removed and was raised as a woman, etc. Post-transition transgendered people are obviously automatically out if they are taking hormones of any kind. And obviously these sorts of debates are extremely upsetting to the athletes who find their sex questioned, whether or not they are on the intersex spectrum. People who compete on this elite level in effect permit the testing of their bodies for a variety of cheating mechanisms, which might concievably include an assumed sex identity to be more competitive in the female field. At the same time, what the IAAF is doing here is drawing international attention and might lead to unwelcome testing at lower levels of competition. If we say sex testing is acceptable on the international level, what about the national? What about Masters swimming competitions? What about regional soccer and basketball matches? The competitive urge to get a rival disqualified on the basis of sex will be present at each of those levels. Should transgender, intersex, and simply ambiguous individuals be up for debate on every rung of the competitve ladder? I don't think so, because the process is so invasive and distressing, but I don't know where the line should be drawn.
So, I won't be signing the NSRC petition, but I do think the IAAF should have initiated the sex test earlier and have kept the test a secret so that her win wasn't being questioned in this public and humiliating manner.
Here's some of the text from the NSRC email:
Her family and her community support her, but Caster has been shamed as an athlete because she doesn’t look the way a woman is “supposed to” look. And now the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is making her undergo invasive tests to tell her whether she deserves her gold medal.
XX - why?! Why does Caster have to endure this violation of her personal privacy just because she looks different? Why does the IAAF get to decide who she is? I’m outraged. Are you? Then tell the IAAF to stay out of Caster Semenya’s pants.
I guess my answer to the NSRC would be - no, I'm not outraged. If someone chooses to compete for the title of 'Fastest Female Runner of the 800m' then I think they should have to expect to prove the 'female' as well as the 'fastest'. If sports are going to be divided by sex then this is the unfortunate and inevitable result.
Having said that, I think that Caster's case and some previous confirmed cases show that ambiguous and intersex individuals have caused, and will continue to cause, periodic debates among elite women's sports. And it's really embarrassing and enraging to see the misogyny still present in women's sports, as with comments by Italy's Elisa Cusma:
"These kind of people should not run with us. For me, she is not a woman. She's a man."
Sorry bitch, you aren't the one who gets to decide the sex or gender of other athletes.
But I can't see a clear way forward. Sports will continue to be divided along sex lines, which I think is very positive from the standpoint of the vast majority of women. But then the question of sex will continue to be arguable - is someone a female if she has XY chromosomes but has androgen insensitivity syndrome, is someone a female if she was born XXY but had her external genitalia removed and was raised as a woman, etc. Post-transition transgendered people are obviously automatically out if they are taking hormones of any kind. And obviously these sorts of debates are extremely upsetting to the athletes who find their sex questioned, whether or not they are on the intersex spectrum. People who compete on this elite level in effect permit the testing of their bodies for a variety of cheating mechanisms, which might concievably include an assumed sex identity to be more competitive in the female field. At the same time, what the IAAF is doing here is drawing international attention and might lead to unwelcome testing at lower levels of competition. If we say sex testing is acceptable on the international level, what about the national? What about Masters swimming competitions? What about regional soccer and basketball matches? The competitive urge to get a rival disqualified on the basis of sex will be present at each of those levels. Should transgender, intersex, and simply ambiguous individuals be up for debate on every rung of the competitve ladder? I don't think so, because the process is so invasive and distressing, but I don't know where the line should be drawn.
So, I won't be signing the NSRC petition, but I do think the IAAF should have initiated the sex test earlier and have kept the test a secret so that her win wasn't being questioned in this public and humiliating manner.