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A little over two years ago, a 26-year-old Indian runner named Santhi Soundarajan was rushed to a hospital near her hometown in Tamil Nadu. One news agency said she'd ingested a pesticide. Another news agency said she'd swallowed a veterinarian drug. None disputed that Soundarajan tried to take her life or spent much time wondering why.In December of 2006, it was announced that Soundarajan was being stripped of her young life's biggest achievement, a silver medal in the 800-meter race at the Asian Games. The reason: she failed a sex test. It was later revealed later that Soundarajan suffered from AIS, androgen insensitivity syndrome, a condition in which a genetic male is resistant to male sex hormones like testosterone and makes the body appear externally to be female.
"The incident surely robbed India of a world-class athlete," P. Nagarajan, her coach, told Time magazine recently. "An incident like this is enough to ruin a girl's life -- and it did ruin her life and career."
I hope the same despair doesn't descend upon the latest member of the human race who appears snared in this purgatory in nature: 18-year-old Caster Semenya, the new women's 800-meter world champion. But in the midst of an unfathomable, inhumanely handled investigation into her sex by the global track and field governing body IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations), Semenya failed to appear Saturday in her native South Africa for the national cross country championships in which she was scheduled to compete in the 4k. It was as big a story Saturday in sports-crazed South Africa as the goings-on at a stadium 7,500 miles away in New Zealand, where South Africa met New Zealand for the Tri-Nations rugby championship and won it for the first time in five years.
The IAAF ordered the sex tests and has refused to confirm or deny apparent leaks about Semenya being intersexed, having biological characteristics of men and women. The IAAF said it is reviewing the test results and will issue a final decision on Semenya in November.
The South African Press Association reported that Semenya's coach, Michael Seme, said Semenya withdrew from Saturday's meet because she was "not feeling well." It was a frighteningly similar speculation about Soundarajan when she was whisked to the hospital. It was said Soundarajan's stomach was upset. Soundarajan, who is attempting to rebuild her life as a coach, later disputed reports that she had become suicidal.
The cases of Caster Semenya and Santhi Soundarajan, both poor women, and a few others in past years that are similar to theirs, is not really about sex and gender and the category in which they should be allowed to compete as athletes. It is not about record times and medals. It is, instead, about human dignity, or more precisely, allowing others to maintain theirs.
"It all depends in the way that they [potentially intersexed people] find out," Alice Dreger, a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, told me Saturday. She is writing a new book on science and identity politics. "If they find out in a way that is private and supportive, it can be quite a good experience because it makes sense of a whole bunch of things for them, like, for example, secrecy and whispers in the family ... or just the sense of isolation about being different and thinking they're the only one.
"But this is the exact opposite," Dreger said. "This woman is being thrown into this realization with no private discussion with her, no support being offered to her in terms of peer support ... and no referral to any of the support groups, so far as I can tell. She probably doesn't feel safe doing so at this point.
"This is just having your genitals slapped on the front page," Dreger protested. "It is so ridiculous in terms of the level of humiliation."
If ever you wondered why we have HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in this country, the Semenya case is it. Privacy, particularly of one's health, is about respect for one another. It is too bad athletes by and large sign away their rights to HIPAA. Semenya should be a call to athletes everywhere to recapture that privacy and a call to all of us to respect it. Semenya has not been afforded that. She is being laid bare before the entire world, not just a few voyeurs. This is Erin Andrews tenfold.
The Australian affiliate of the International Intersex Organization pointed out in a position paper last summer just how stigmatizing what Semenya is enduring can be. "Intersex people have very high rates of social exclusion and depression, other mental health issues and suicide, resulting from the way we are mistreated," the group stated. "Empirical evidence puts the suicide rate of intersex youth at 30 percent. These deaths may well significantly decrease if we were to be granted social inclusion, human rights, protection against discrimination and vilification ..."
"What is disconcerting is that the pattern being followed in releasing these purported results is the same as the one being used when Ms. Semenya's humiliation started," South Africa's sports minister Makhenkesi Stofile told the media on Friday. "We see the media being the ones breaking the story, while those close to the matter are pleading ignorance. Just like before, Caster's human rights are not respected at all. The humiliation she and her family suffered is still continuing. We are even seeing the greed factor starting to outstrip genuine concerns for her rights and future well being."
"No one doubts her gender anymore," Stofile said. "Now the issue is of the percentages of her gender; this is as disgusting as it is unethical."
Stofile said his department was consulting a top legal firm about action against the IAAF over human rights violations. Any lawyer worth his or her oath should take the case of Caster Semenya pro bono, for her young life, I'm afraid, through unjust and grave insensitivity has been ruined.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Had the IAAF consulted with an AIS professional to educate itself prior to conducting its proceedings, Caster may have been spared the humiliation of being pushed center stage. This failure has cast Ms Semenya from the top of the world into an unfolding tragedy. Caster, accepted and loved by her family and supported by her country for who she is, now has to face the biggest challenge of her life - a new self-identity. She did nothing "wrong." The IAAF should embrace her competitive spirit and athleticism rather than sensationalizing her nature. Caster deserves dignity not derision.
It's thoughtless and cruel what's being done to this young woman. Stigmatizing someone for what is, in essence, a birth defect, is the lowest form of bigotry.
My heart truly goes out to Caster, and to anyone else that is born with this type of condition. I cannot imagine the agony that these people must suffer while growing up. However, the rules of track and field, or any other sport, are in place for a reason. That is to ensure a fair and level playing field for all involved. The elite women athletes have dedicated most of their lives to acheiving the competitive level of Olympic or World Championship athletes. After all of the years of hard work, dedication, and sacrifice to reach the highest levels of their sport, they should not be expected to compete in a race against a person with no ovaries and two testosterone producing testicles. Biologically, Caster is a male without external male genitalia. This is heartwrenching, and Caster should not be scorned. But, Caster should not be allowed to compete as a female. Caster should be proud of the 1:55 800 meter run. It is a far cry from world class in men's track and field, but would win or place highly in many U.S. boys high school state championships, in a comparable 17-18 year old peer group, which is a huge accomplishment in itself.
Well, there's essentially two possibilities here. The condition identified is called AIS--Androgen Sensitivity Syndrome--and has two possible variations, Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrom. For the gonads to be relevant to the discussion, Ms. Semenya must have the later; in complete AIS, the issue would be irrelevant because testosterone cannot affect the body (the receptors necessary don't exist), and she'd be actually even more hard-pressed than a genetic female to compete, since normal females do produce some amounts of testosterone.
In the case of Partial AIS, there's a variety of possible end results ranging from ambiguous genitalia and appearance to largely unambiguous (and more specifically female) genitalia and partial masculinization. I'd tend to place Ms. Semenya on the higher end of that scale. And yes, she's still certainly female... Gonadal sex is irrelevant if the chemicals the gonads produce don't result in any kind of impact on the body. The default for homo sapien as with all mammals is female. Active commands must be received, chemically, from the instructions encoded on the Y chromosome to make a male. When those commands are not received, the body defaults to a female baseline regardless of chromosomes, and we get people like Ms. Semenya.
Since the gonads in AIS cases are just extremely severe cancer risks with no other function it seems that in the case of partial AIS the best thing to do would be to ban her from sport until they have been removed and a period of several years without the influence of testosterone has passed. It's not any different than steroids, just that Semenya certainly genuinely, and legitimately, never had any idea that she was under the influence of such a drug (as testosterone technically is) as to give her undo advantage. Many people with AIS even in western nations don't find out about it until they go to the doctor at 16 - 17 and ask why they haven't started menstruating yet--coming from a poor family in South America I have no doubt she had no idea about it.
--edit: the first reference to AIS said Androgen Sensitivity Syndrome, when it is of course Insensitivity, like the rest.
-- Marina.
Great article, Kevin, and kudos for being a voice of reason from day one of this story. I hope that Caster has a strong support system to guide her through this time in her life...
Of course we regret the breach of Caster Semenya's privacy and dignity, however, I do not agree with the selective and skewed rendition of the facts as presented in this blog, whose previous blog post on this topic was hardly a "plea" for anything, it was an accusatory rant.
1) Track and field's governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), is a "white" organization. True or False?
False. The IAAF President is a black Senegalese former athlete named Lamine Diack and the IAAF's 27-member governing body is composed of people of every color from every continent on the planet, including only one American, as far as I can determine.
There are currently only 4 women on the IAAF council, however, rule changes mandate that there be a minimum of 6 women after the next IAAF elections in 2011.
http://www.iaaf.org/aboutiaaf/structure/council/orgCode=197356/index.html
The South African National Congress (ANC) has filed a complaint with the UN High Commission on Human Rights (UNHCHR) over what they deem to be the IAAF's "racism and sexism" in the handling of Caster Semenya's case.
2) The UN High Commission is a "white" organization. True or False?
False, the Office of the High Commisioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) is occupied by Navanethem Pillay, a "non-white" (and "non-black," I might add) South African former-anti-Apartheid activist of Tamil descent, who belongs to a local South African "Indian" community.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NEWSEVENTS/Pages/NewHC.aspx
Caster Semenya's coach, Wilfred Daniel, the South African national track & field coach since 1993, resigned his position over what he calls the "disgusting" handling of the Caster Semenya case. He also acknowledges that the national governing body, Athletics South Africa (ASA), let Semenya down by not advising her properly about the gender tests or briefing her when the media storm erupted.
In other words, prior to the Berlin World Championships, the IAAF requested gender verification tests on Semenya based, in part, on the dramatic improvements she posted in only a few months, which is often an indication of cheating.
Harold Adams, the doctor on the South African team, conducted the tests in Pretoria at the beginning of August and was requested by the IAAF to bring the results with him to the World Championships in Berlin. But he never did. In fact, as of Sept. 10, the IAAF had not received the test results.
Her coach, Wilfred Daniels, regrets that both he and Athletics South Africa kept the truth about the nature of the tests from her, instead telling her that they were routine doping tests. In that sense, he's on the same page as the IAAF:
"I wish the South African federation had worked this all out before Berlin. It think a good case can be made that the federation should have done its due diligence, so to speak, in private back home. This would have saved the young athlete a lot of personal harm." (IAAF medical consultant in an interview posted on Runner's World)
But the the South African federtaion and ANC neither agree with Daniels (about whom their position is basically "good riddance"), nor are they willing to shoulder ANY of the blame for what happened Semenya. To them, it's simply a case of racism and sexism by the IAAF.
3) Wilfred Daniels is a "white" man. True or False?
Well, it's fairly obvious he's not white, isn't it?
A familiar device used by this blogger is to make a few phone calls in order to reach a preconceived conclusion by use of selective quotations. It's more a subtle form of self-promotion than it is instructive or educational.
So I'm re-posting the Runner's World blog, which includes extensive interviews with medical authorities -- both male and female -- who are experts in the field of intersex issues and/or IAAF policies and procedures regarding gender verification testing. One of the experts, Alice Dreger, PhD, also contribued a recent article on the subject to the New York Times.
There's a lot of information here. Scroll down:
http://rodale.typepad.com/footloose/
And finally, it's a false claim made by this blogger that this is not a gender issue. Women's reproductive issues have been at the center of the gender politics of track and field since women were first allowed to compete in the sport at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, after which, the International Olympic Committe (IOC) almost immediately excluded them from running any event greater than the sprints.
The women's 800 meters (Caster Semenya's event) in 1928 "triggered a storm when the press reported that several athletes fell to the ground after their events. This was deemed unseemly and in 1929, the IOC voted to exclude women from the athletics events. The IAAF, under pressure from the Americans, reversed the ban, although women were not allowed to compete in the 800 metres again until 1960." ("Women's long battle for the right to compete," www.theage.com.au)
It was believed that running damaged the uterus (something that Caster Semenya does not have, BTW), and this was dressed up in medical facts.
KEVIN.... jzz is calling you out!!!
Do you have a like response or are we to believe jzz that you do not have full facts and are cherry picking statements to deceive us poor readers with poor journalism?
God/Evolution: Either way you look at it, the next world step is trans-gender humans. Negros were here in the beginning, so naturally, they would be the first to show human evolvement. We need to start thinking about changing/updating our text books/bibles, because neither one, discusses it in an intellectual manner. I'm sure that the lost book(s)will be dug-up, shortly! The 1st to accept it, will be the 1st to reap in it's grants and donations.
leave her alone
she didnt know
the world is so damn cruel
GIVE ME A BREAK! Semenya and his/her trainers HAD to know he/she was multi-gendered. The five o'clock shadow & withered penis hanging above her female parts would have been a dead give away. It was simply an attempt at CHEATING; trying to get an unfair advantage over the female athletes who didn't have all that testosterone pumping through their veins.
It's a shame that we are such a narrow minded society. Check out this video, commenting on the sadness of the Caster Semenya situation: http://www.youtube.com/CheeseWhizardSports#play/uploads/3/RLB2op2QIA4
this is simple, if you are not a 100% female you CANNOT compete in these events. What would happen if Caster or the next AIS person simply won every female event out there? Is this fair to all the 100% women who spend their lives preparing for these events, no it is not.
I'm sorry he/she has gone thru this public scorn, but he/she and the handlers had to know this was coming.
Make a simple rule, if you have more than x amount of testosterone you cannot compete with women, its simply not fair.