When Things Are Complicated
I've been coming across news about an interesting case in the news and yesterday i decided to dig into it to learn more about it. It is about the South African middle-distance runner, Mokgadi Caster Semenya.
She won a gold medal in 2009 at the World Championships and right after that she was asked to take the sex test for gender verification.
After winning the 800 meter race at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany on August 19, 2009.
She was not allowed to compete until 6 July 2010 when IAAF cleared her to return to competition. Semenya had reached an agreement with the IAAF to keep her medal and award and was allowed to compete again.
source
The sex test results were never published officially, but some results were leaked in the press and were widely discussed, resulting in at the time unverified claims about Semenya having an intersex trait. source
She was born with XY chromosomes and due to that she has higher testosterone level than usual.
In April 2018, the IAAF announced new "differences of sex development" rules that required athletes with specific disorders of sex development, testosterone levels of 5 nmol/L and above, and certain androgen sensitivity to take medication to lower their testosterone levels, effective beginning 8 May 2019.Due to the narrow scope of the changes, which also apply to only those athletes competing in the 400m, 800m, and 1500m, many people thought the rule change was designed specifically to target Semenya. source
This is a very complicated situation and I believe officials were not ready to deal with these kind of cases. If higher levels of testosterone can help athletes to have a better performance, then it's not fair to the others as they don't have an equal chance. I can understand Semenya's feelings as well. It must be hard for her to be a target all the time. It's never easy to be different and it's not her fault.
What's the answer? I don't know but it looks like officials have no clue either. I know there were athletes that were excluded from competitions because they failed the gender test, look at Dora Ratjen, Ewa Kłobukowska, Pratima Gaonkar, the Indian athlete and swimmer committed suicide after the scandal about her failing sex verification test.
I'm going to keep an eye on the case as I'm curious to see what's going to happen to Semenya.
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We were just discussing this the other day. It really is a challenging topic as there is a lot of gray area I think. I can see both of the main sides of the argument--of course you don't want to have any athletes having an unfair advantage, but at the same time how horrible is that to be the athlete in question and have such scrutiny over very personal matters? I couldn't imagine having my body tested and talked about in such a way, so I give Semenya and others much credit for continuing to follow their dreams despite it all.
I agree with you on that. It's an awkward situationfor sure.
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