Gender and sports

Have you seen the current debate about Caster Semenya? CBS has a brief article here, and Jezebel has something a bit more in-depth and interesting here. In short, Semenya is a South African track athlete who is currently undergoing testing to determine whether she is, in fact, a woman, and whether, therefore, she is legitimately competing in women's sports.

NLLDH and I watched the world track and field championships (held in Berlin) the other night, and we saw her utterly blow away the field en route to winning the 800-meter race. She won by 2.45 seconds, which is a huge lead in such a race. She was truly impressive.

And as much as I hate to admit it, I couldn't help but look at her and think, Wow, she looks like a man.

The CBS article points out that officials do not suspect her of cheating by having had a sex change; I don't think anyone is suggesting that Semenya is a man who has consciously decided to pass as a woman. Instead, they're concerned that she has a "medical condition."

It's hard, given Semenya's appearance (and some of the statements in the Jezebel piece), not to look at her and wonder if she is perhaps intersex. But if she is - what then? There are "concerns" about her competing as a woman if she isn't "fully" female - whatever that means.

I'm kind of uncomfortable with the idea of declaring someone "fully" female or "fully" male. It raises too many echoes of past systems of categorizing someone by race, wherein if a person had even "one drop" of African blood, s/he was held to be black. It sounds like if Semenya has "one drop" of male genes (chromosomes/hormones/whatever), that will be enough to deem her male, or at least, not female, regardless of how she identifies herself.

Myself, I support the right of an individual to declare for hirself what hir gender identity is. So I was surprised at my own initial resistance to Semenya's success - like it's "not fair" for her to compete if she has some kind of genetic issue (which, indeed, she may not at all). Which made me realize how much athletic competition reinscribes gender divisions, even at the same time that it purports to provide an equal playing field and to allow women to showcase strength, agility, determination, courage, and competitive spirit - things not always traditionally held to be feminine. Maybe the problem with Semenya is that she goes beyond what women are supposed to be able to do? Women athletes are great, as long as they don't actually challenge what men can do? Women athletes who surpass their peers have, after all, often been accused of being overly masculine and unfeminine (Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova come to mind for me, but that's because I've followed tennis since I was a kid - I'm sure you can come up with other examples from other sports.) Is the controversy over Semenya just an extension of this discomfort with women's achievements?

As someone of conventionally unambiguous gender, I present no social problem. People don't have to worry about how to treat me or where to place me in the categories in their heads. But I have had students who got beat up and arrested for using the "wrong" bathroom, where the bathroom they chose didn't match up with the labels people around them wanted to place upon them. Semenya appears to unsettle people in a similar way - which is not, I should add, intended to act as if she is therefore the problem. Her case just made me realize how many ways there are to bump up against and be limited by the gender labels that we place on certain bodies.

What's your reaction to the controversy over Semenya's success? Do you think she should retain her world medal? Is it "unfair" for someone who identifies as a woman but who has some "male" physiology to compete against women of conventional physiology? And if so, what should Semenya do - compete with men, despite being a woman? Be barred from competing at all because she can't play within society's gender rules?

Comments

[Dr. Moonbeam]

I haven't followed the flap over Semenya, but I wrote a piece of fiction early this year that had an intersex main character, so I did some research and thinking about the topic. There's a heck of a lot more variation and fluidity in biological sex than we are accustomed to acknowledging, and that becomes further complicated by social gendering, by self or others.

Your point that sports reinscribe gender/sex divisions is a good one. Is separate equal? Or, since on average men (however defined) are bigger/faster/stronger than women (ditto), is keeping the division the only reasonable approach? I think of wrestling, with its weight divisions, because it would be unfair to pit someone of 130 lbs against someone of 220. But then individuals who fall somewhere in that amorphous gender middle that we mostly ignore - where do they fit in? What is fair to them and to their competitors? In areas of life where gender/sex is (or should be) irrelevant, this is a less urgent question (although again, your point about bathrooms is a good one).

No answers from me at this time... I just think the questions are important!

[Chris]

I feel bad for her, she can't help her condition and she probably has been mocked all her life. At least she can be finally do something that she can be proud of.

[dave]

Leave the poor girl alone.