Intersex Lady Runs Fast, Makes Trouble
Caster Semenya is the most important athlete of our generation! The world at large is quite literally in an uproar over the allegations that champion runner lady Caster is "intersex," with testes and no ovaries. Will South Africa go crazy?
Its highest officials quite possibly will! See, yesterday's report about the results of Semenya's gender test were a leak; the actual results of the test won't be formally revealed by the International Association of Athletics Federations until November.
South Africa's president says the media's invaded her privacy (true maybe, but that's what the media does). The South African athletics chief is trying to say that the early reports are untrustworthy. And the country's Sports and Recreation Ministers says this is all a moot point, because "I don't think she's a woman. She's just a child. I think she's just a child who's enjoying growing up."
Also Winnie Mandela is not too happy about that You magazine cover photo.
I have learned much about this intersex thing from our astoundingly overqualified commenters. And am become more sensitive by the day! Did you know there is a sad part to it? There is. For example: an Indian runner named Santhi Soundarajan also "failed" (weird way to put it, no?) a gender test in a similar fashion in 2006. She was stripped of her medals and, she says, humiliated forever:
"I am treated as a social outcast, even in my own local place," she said...
"It is really, really humiliating. I am unable to move in the society, to go out anywhere. People don't look upon me as an Asian Games medallist, but only speak about when I failed a gender test."
Can we please have an intersex running category in the Olympics! For Chrissake!