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All is fair in war and love,
IAAF case against Semenya
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot
September 12, 2009
Now the question of gender has
nothing to do with the nature of a woman’s genitalia. This is
because of the findings of some internal tests conducted by the
IAAF on Caster Semenya, the South African female Black athlete.
Winning one race at the World
Athletic Games in Berlin, in August of this year, has changed
Semenya’s whole world overnight. And, of course, her gender.
She will soon be classified as a human oddity
Surprisingly, neither her Mom nor
her father, her village nor the midwife or doctor that assisted
in her birth saw this oddity coming.
Semenya can now on be described,
with a smirk by those who wish, as something other than a woman.
The challenge for Semenya now
will be to maintain her status as a career female athlete.
This 18-year-old woman athlete,
Semenya, will for now live in limbo, as consequence to the IAAF
doing. She will not know whether or when she can return to the
tracks to resume her spectacular achievements in sports.
Not being an athlete myself, I am
ignorant of what goes on the minds of talented athletes like
Semenya at times like this.
But I know what I saw when she blew away the competition
to set a record in the 800-meter race in Berlin, August 2009.
In that race were other female
athletes, with rippling muscles. just like Semenya's.
She left them far behind.
,
I am curious to learn whether any
test was done on these other female athletes before they were
allowed to compete, or just their female genitalia designation
was all that was required to confirm their qualifications?
Yet, for Semenya, the officials
of the IAAF have made her story different.
And undermined her gender, and therefore her will, for
her future appearances in 800-meter races.
The Associated Press stated on
Friday September 11, that “Caster Semanya Withdraws From
Competition Amid Speculation.”
The AP piece, describing Semenya
as the winner of the 800 meters race at the world track meet
last month in Berlin, said “At that meet, international track
officials said that Semenya, a muscular 18-year-old, needed to
undergo sex-determination testing to confirm her further
eligibility.”
Notice that AP failed to describe
the 18-year-old Semenya as a girl or woman in that piece.
Has the AP already made up its mind about this issue?
When Semenya’s coach was asked
why she would not participate in up-coming competitions, he
simply said that “she was not feeling well.”
Of course, she would not after
such attack on her gender and illegibility.
But was her coach afraid to tackle the issue head on,
right then and there?
One would have thought that in
the world of track and field sports where the emphasis is on
performance and the individual, fairness would be part of the
consideration.
That if you want to exclude non
females from participating on the basis of an internal medical
test, you would subject all supposed female athletes to similar
test.
Females with or without rippling
muscles that would show up for the same race, would be examined.
Apparently, the exception was the
case for Semenya.
She alone had to do the test.
But why?
I am left to suspect that someone
saw her run in the heats and decided on the basis of her
performance, not her looks alone, to exclude her from the
finals. With her in
the finals, there would be no chance of any of the others
winning.
Thus, the World Athletic body,
without a prior medical test on Semenya or any other athlete,
unabashedly announced its doubt about Semenya’s gender.
The timing of the announcement
could alone have affected her performance and denied her the
medal. A medical
test, done after the race, confirming her as a female, would not
have reached back to alter the result of that race.
The august officials of the world
athletic body knew this fact.
We may just as well conclude that the move was meant to
cause harm. To
prevent Semenya from competing and wining in the finals.
As of today, the IAAF confirmed
it has received the results of Caster Semenya's gender test.
Reports from the media also said that Semenya was found
to have an inter gender condition, meaning she is internally
both man and woman.
Strike out her birth genitalia
now. The test so far
has been applied exclusively to Semenya.
The track authority "would not
confirm or deny the reports…saying only that its decision would
be announced in November," wrote AP.
The officials were silent on that
specific aspect of the issue.
We have the words of Arne
Ljungqvist, the former medical commission chairman for track’s
world governing body, quoted by the AP, to comfort us now:
That "a person’s sex is not
always easy to define.”
And that “There is no simple,
single lab test that can tell if you are a man or a woman...It
is not Black and white.”
Be patient, this official seemed
to have said.
But further down the road the
gender definition in athletics will be made murkier.
We may not be able to tell if it were politics or
science.
The officials picked Semenya out
of a field of other athletes that looked like men in women’s
bodies. Could the cause be because she won?
No sound medical grounds, yet
they did it!
The uncertainty of the test as
pointed out by Arne Lundqvist, the former chair of the medical
body of the same athletic organization, was there, but this
uncertainty was not allowed to touch the other female athletes,
except Semenya.
So, we must be left with the
following suspicion:
If for some reason you cannot
defeat Semenya, the IAFF has sanctioned that the uncertainty of
a lab test can do so for you.
In a racial world, such an
assumption is not good, especially when the victim happens to be
a talented Black athlete competing against other muscled white
women who have no chance of defeating her.
The cruel truth of the saying
that “All is fair in war and love” is again revealed.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher
www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, September 12, 2009
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