IAAF urges caution over Semenya intersex claims
By: Alesia’ Mason
After months of arguments over Caster Semenya’s true sex, it was discovered that she was actually a hermaphrodite. The big issue came after Ms. Semenya was accused of being a man because of her impressive performance in Berlin where she won the women’s 800-meters in 1 min 55 seconds where many people said that she looked and acted like a man. The tests found she didn’t have ovaries but internal testes that produced large amounts of testosterone. Her father and the South African sports minister feel outraged over her treatment. Her father protested that, “she was his little girl”. Many wonder if she didn’t look, act or perform as she did, would they ask for such tests? She recently appeared on a magazine cover wearing jewelry, makeup, a dress and having her hair done. If the results do prove conclusive that she is, in fact, a hermaphrodite, “our legal advice says it will be very hard to strip her of her medal”.
I personally think it’s really harsh for these people to look at this young lady at instantly label her. In fact, she seems like a really nice young woman even if she were born with both reproductive organs. Why is it that they only jumped on her after she beat her competition so brutally? To me, this still shows that a woman can’t do too much in a male dominated sport unless she does it in a way that’s non-threatening to men. Even if she was born with both organs, is it really fair for her to have to give away a medal over something she had no control over? I don’t think so.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/09/11/athletics.semenya.gender.iaaf/index.html
1 comment:
Wow! Talk about putting some one out there with the sharks! I feel that this was completely unnecessary and feel bad that she has to be embarrassed in this way. However when i heard about it i was curios to find out what happened because you would never think a track star would be accused of being another gender
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