Caster Semenya needs to know we have not lost our humanity

Very interesting post… Thank you for reminding people that there is a human, not some freakshow tabloid fodder.

And imagine being told she will never be able to bear her own children, I agree, they should stop turning this into a freak show and remember there is a human invovled!

Thanks for writing this, I was also thinking of saying something similar – the press are proving themselves to be the lowest of the low!

One question – should there now be a new category for athletes that are in between male/female to participate in sports events?

[...] weighed in on the story of the leaked report to the Ozzie paper, The Sydney Morning Herald. The The Daily Dispatch editor says on his blog: This is not a time for freak show giggles, it is a time for compassion. It is a time for South [...]

She is only a teenager. A mere child. Cannot immagine what this is doing to her as a person.

Shall we submit Matina Navratilova and all those big hairy Russian women that won all the shot-putts at the olympics too?
this poor kid, that’s all I can think of her and her family. Hate what these people have done. thanks to DD for at least reporting the news but showing responsibility and sensitivity

I really feel sorry for Caster. I am one of those that can’t have kids and, as I told a friend the other day, will always feel broody as a result. I can remember how I felt when the news was brken to me. My life fell apart!

Now, apart from this, she is also being told she is not a real woman and never will be. I am sure that especially in the black communities, this will be even more difficult to deal with. I also feel so much for her family. I really hope that Caster finds real joy with someone special in her life who will love and accept her for WHO she is, a special and ambitious person. She always seems to be smiling.

Best of luck to her in her future and may those who have brought all this ridicule onto her be infested by the fleas on 1000 camels!!!!

Remember this is ‘leaked’ info, so the truth may yet be different.
Even still, I believe that those who worked closest with her in her coaching/management should be held most accountable. If they had sufficient qualifications & experience to take somebody to an International event, then they should have realised LONG AGO that this young girl was not a ‘normal’ athlete. Did they push her into the world spotlight knowing there was something amiss and hoping not to get caught out ?
The International body are reported to have asked for tests and clarification BEFORE she competed. If that is true and her management team refused, then they are the ones to shoulder the blame.
We can bleat on all day about the media, the hurt and the side-shows surrounding this matter but the show was a public one the minute the starting gun was fired. It is the clowns hiding in the background that have made this into a circus….and one young person’s life has been ruined.

Ag, let’s polish our angelic halos this morning. The way the whole case has been handled is indeed a shame including all the sabre-rattling by the press and SA Athletics. Little thought seems to have been given by the cult od personality involved about the undue advantage her male hormones gave her against women in the track event she won. My own impression is that there are people in this country who want to dominate everything, but they don’t do a very good job with what they wish to dominate. Just my two cents worth.

I think the great majority of commentators have missed a most important point, which is that one’s biological sex and one’s gender are not necessarily the same thing. Gender identity is partly, even largely constructed through enculturation, while your sex is biologically inherited (albeit, with modern medical science, changeable). The whole Semenya saga challenges people’s presuppositions and prejudices around sex and gender, and exposes the ignorant foolishness of those who cling to a simple black-white, male-female world. We should all chill out a bit, go to the library and get some yin and yang into our lives.

I feel for Caster. All of this is not this girl’s fault at all. It’s not like she deliberatetly took drugs to give herself an advantage. What happens now? Running is her gift, one she has been working hard to hone probably most of her life. She runs better than some men with extenal balls and more testosterone than she does. Will the way she was created disqualify her from running either as a man or a woman now? Why the IAAF must make her wait any longer is beyond me. they have opted meet and discuss her future based on her results before she has been told.

Well said Andrew. Let us all stand as one with and for Caster.

ZUBB, Martina has been ridiculed all through her career and even still today. She has undergone hundreds of tests over the years and nothing has ever been found wrong other than her been a very strong & ‘butch’ female.
Interesting that you mention the East European athletes. The East German coach (Ekkart Arbeit) that Caster now employs is known for the doping and experimenting on his athletes and was once banned in Europe. The good doctor pumped so many different steroids etc into his athletes that one eventually had a s£x change and became a man.
Arbeit may not have doped Caster, but I believe he knew what he was dealing with and chose to hide the facts in order to ‘experiment’ a bit more. In my opinion he is little more than another Josef Mengele.
The problem is that this is seen as a ‘race’ thing by too many people. Caster is not the first person to have been found out for racing under the ‘wrong gender’ if I may put it that way. Many men have been found out for cheating and racing as women, but there are a few that have undergone examinations after winning in the past and found to be more man than woman purely on their biological make-up. One of the most sensational was a Polish runner whose relay team won a medal in the 1964 Olympics. She was found to carry too many male chromosomes and the whole team stripped of their medals.

My husband did body building when he was a kid – I mean as in from 12 or so. His coach pumped him and the others full of steroids – and now at the age of 36 he has stomach problems – was diagnosed when he was about 32 and the first thing the doc asked was if he did body building as a child, and said that he sees this often in adults. So thanks to an over zealous coach my husband has to take pills to control reflux….

International bodies need a rude overhaul. We the media must cease relying on western media, who always determine the world agenda, and must strive for African perspective.

ZONGZ…and that is ?????
That Caster is the WOMEN’S 800m champion. That ASA are a noble sports body with officials of great credibility. That Arbeit is the best coach in the world. That the rest of the world is wrong.
Hmmmm…..why don’t you just play with yourself.

My heart bleeds for this poor girl. Not only has she just found out she is a hermaphrodite – but at the same time to find out she has no womb – will never have children of her own. And now she doesn’t just have to deal with her own pain – but she has to do it in the full glare of the media. I pray for her strength – and pray she has strong reliable family that she can lean on that will protect her during this time. This poor poor girl

Zongz you maybe just attended the highway africa conference in Ght??? This is not a perspective issue, the issues (to my mind) are 1.) Why did ASA, knowing of Casters elevated testosterone level prior to the German event, not investigate further? b)Why, when the story broke, was Caster not protected, I mean protected NOT gagged? c)Why are ASA avoiding the IAAF now? d)Why were wannabe politicians allowed, by ASA, to hijack her homecoming and use it as a platform for hate speech and racsist attacks on white SA supporters? (Maybe because ASA knew the truth and were obfuscating??) Caster, we salute your courage, ASA, SHAME on you for not treating this young lady correctly!!!

Caster should sue ASA and IAAF and settle down with a career in coaching IMO. She shouldn’t stop running though.

Would her testosterone levels fall back to normal if she had those internal testes removed? Would she then be able to compete?

Just want to comment here, seems obvious there has been a cover up somewhere and this athlete has become the victim here. Having said that we cannot have one set of rules for South Africa and another for the rest of the world, I read now SA declaring world war three if his athlete finds herslef stripped of the title and banned from racing, cannot see how is that possible considering they cannot control the crime in their own country. Other athletes have been banned and medals taken away because of gender incompatabilty, lets just pray a fair judgement is reached in this case.

I am not so sure that Caster is all that innocent. I am very sure that her enraged parents are definitely not all that innocent. I am very sure that ASA has connived and sought to cheat their way through this whole debacle.
Caster liked to play boys games but at some stage her mother would have become acutely aware that unlike other girls Caster was not having periods. Caster would have been aware that something about her as a woman was different.
ASA would have taken one look at her and known something was wrong. I also do not for one moment believe that local athletes who she beat did not protest. What did ASA do about that? Nothing.
ASA were so overjoyed at having a black athlete who performed at world class level that they lost all common sense and in my opinion were ready to play the race card the moment they were challenged. Now they have been challenged and their, and our politicians, reactions have made them the laughing stock of the world that watches track and field.
All of them have played the fame game and have been caught out.

This young girl needs to be treated with compassion. A diagnosis has apparently been linked and it is an extremely rare diagnosis. The Minister of Sport shows neither common sense nor any knowledge of international sport pressures – to threaten was on the athletics world is simply “sick”. But for a moment imagine South Africa had a star female athlete who was beaten into 2nd place by a foreign runner with the same diagnosis as Caster… can all the critics deny there would have been an outcry in South Africa? Tarika (see above) raises an interesting medical issue. I’m no medical doctor but maybe the levels of testosterone will be drastically reduced, reducing her potential performance but allowing her to compete, even if she can never rise to the same level to compete internationally. Remove her medal? Unless it is proved she knowingly cheated, such a possibility is highly unlikely… but if ASA or her coach knowingly cheated by allowing her to compete, knowing her medical condition, then she may well lose her medal and be the victim of actions which result in life bans for the cheating officials.

That poor, poor child. It is unforgivable what they have done to her. Please fire immediately her coach, the responsible for SA Athletics and the Minister of Sport. They are all jointly liable because they ignored the problem and decided in order to get a medal at all costs to put her through all this and ruin her life.They all knew that there was a problem now they dress her like a freak and they put her on the cover of a SA magazine to find a justification.Years of therapy is what she needs now not a “third world war” that will keep her on the spotlight any longer.

[...] that would surely follow but this appears to have been thoughtlessly swept aside. This newspaper’s position on Semenya echoes that of many of our readers and we have said that all that matters is the well being of and support for this teenager. The ANC [...]