As one who followed the athletics events, especially to watch the Caribbean (via Jamaica) runaway with medals, I was struck by the scrutiny and treatment of South African athlete Caster Semenya with regard to her gender. While Semenya is not the first woman to have doubts cast on her gender, I found the treatment from IAAF both baffling and laced with ironies and contradictions.
As I understand it, the concern arises because Semenya does not conform to some ideal body type of a woman, hence a gender verification test. While I wonder what that body-type is and how this is determined (i.e by whose standards), I cannot help but deduce that this seems to be too closely linked to colonial half-baked-science, eugenics and sexist proclivities. Given the numerous tests for urine samples while being watched, one can hardly believe that we have a case of a woman masquerading as a man!
Interestingly further clarification of the IAAF request makes this whole spectacle even more ridiculous. There is the claim that the verification is grounded on a concern that she has a rare medical condition that gives her an unfair advantage. This is even more mindboggling: how can someone with an inborn biological difference be held responsible for an unfair advantage? Is it that all athletes are born with the same genes that give them the same height, length of legs, body shape and proportion of fast and slow muscle fibres?
What is unfair, unjust and humiliating is that like some alien species on parade she will be examined by "medics, scientists, gynaecologists and psychologists", reminiscent of those colonial efforts at trying to make Black bodies the object of science. Not surprisingly her case is being compared to that of the 18th century Kosian woman (Saartjie Baartman) who was undressed in order for umbrella carrying colonialists to poke and study here genitals.
In my view, an unfair advantage that should be scrutinised is located in those rich nations and athletes with all the top-of-the-range-facilities and personnel who are able to pump millions into getting athletes fit to compete. Those are the athletes and nations with an unfair advantage – not people like Caster Semenya, for whom sport facilities are virtually nonexistent and where training takes place on uneven dirt tracts. No wonder these athletes would be largely unheard of until someone discovers them!
In the meantime, athletes from the Caribbean and Africa will continue to excel and break records purely on determination, muscles strengthened by walking long distances to get to school or carrying water for long distances, remembering colonial history, and living on a diet of ackees, breadfruit, yams, ground provisions and fruits among the multiplicity of fresh foods and fruits.
© copyright Jagessar August 28 2009
