Simple Question... Male or Female?

Most people are born male or female. Chromosome 23 contains either an XX pair which is female or an XY pair which is male. Plain and simple, one box is checked on the birth certificate. This is not the case for 18-year-old Caster Semenya of South Africa though. She burst onto the track and field scene this summer at the World Championships in Berlin when she absolutely blew away the field in the women’s 800 meters. The whispering began as the qualifying rounds started, by fans, announcers, and other competitors themselves. The International Association of Athletics Federation noticed too and required Caster to undergo gender testing.

The “gender testing” was always described to outsiders very vaguely and indistinctly because the officials say the situation is very complicated. Does purely DNA determine an individual’s gender? What about sex organs or hormone levels? It most certainly is too, when an 18-year-old is put under international scrutiny for something she can’t control, it definitely requires a delicate handling of the state of affairs. My question is how far should this topic be taken? Fellow 800m finalist Elisa Piccione of Italy has been quoted as saying “These kinds of people should not run with us. For me, she’s not a woman. She’s a man.” Even the announcers during the World Championships commented that in the old days a gender test simply depended on the participant pulling down his or her pants. Now that Caster has been metaphorically thrown under the bus in the heat of the moment of competition, people have had a chance to look back a bit, and reflect on the situation.

In the span of five days, the 18-year-old Semenya underwent required gender, was humiliated by international competitors ho commented on her “maleness”, and was the leading story on headline around the world. In my opinion, this controversy has invaded hr privacy and challenged her dignity. She was born like this, and additional drug testing has not revealed any doping or illegal aids. The results that were leaked to the press indicate that she has both male and female sex organs, including internal testes and elevated levels of testosterone. This would explain why no one in her small rural town in South Africa would think she was a guy. Her external sex organs look female, however, her muscular physique, large hands and feet, deep voice, and facial hair reflect traditional male characteristics.

This is not exactly the same as someone who has specifically undergone a sex change, but it still merits attention. As new technology and procedures become available, where do we draw the line? Renee Richards, a tennis player in the 1970s, underwent a male to female sex operation and wanted to compete with the women. How do we justify this? Is this fair? How do we define which box to check, male or female? Is the gender assigned at birth the key, or in athletics is the exact physical make-up of the person more important? Also important in the Caster Semenya case beyond the gender issue, besides defining the line between male and female, how do we treat these people with dignity? This case highlights the fact that the determination of male and female is biologically concrete. How can privacy, dignity, and athletic fairness exist? Individuals with transgender or hermaphrodite characteristics have a social construction of their male or femaleness that goes beyond the appearance of sex organs or DNA. They can obviously be affected by what other individuals say, but many people seemed to forget that this summer when they saw a tomboy blow open the world championships this summer.

Sources Relevant to my post:
Dixon, Robyn. "Runner Caster Semenya has heard the gender comments all her life." Los Angeles Times. 21 Aug. 2009. Web. .
Malone, Andrew, Stewart Maclean, and Emily Miller. "'She wouldn't wear dresses and sounds like a man on the phone': Caster Semenya's father on his sex-riddle daughter." Mail Online. 22 Aug. 2009. Web. .
Marathon Mama. "Op Ed Wed.... Caster Semenya." Web log post. 5 Sept. 2009. Web. .
Yaniv, Oren. "Caster Semenya, forced to take gender test, is a woman ... and a man." New York Daily News. 10 Sept. 2009. Web. .