blog.bioethics.net

Let Semenya Run

Some people are simply just born to run, to compete, and to excel in athletics. We never quite understand why--and until recent years when Olympic-level athletics has become in large part overrun by science and technology and highly sophisticated physical training and dietetics, we did not understand why the Michael Phelps of the world could perform almost super-human feats.

But now, when women in particular are able to achieve astonishing, record shattering goals in athletics, we take a much closer look--even into their genetics--to determine, "How did she do that?" Sometimes, as in the case of Caster Semenya we find that in fact there is something unique about her physiological and genetic make-up. But should this exclude her from doing what she was clearly made and born to do. Her body is uniquely suited for these pursuits. Simply because she is different should she be excluded from pursuing it?

I think not. While it may be the case that she has a hard time fitting into the rigid categories laid out by the IAAF, if it is in fact the case according to recent reports that she in fact has no female reproductive organs, then the question remains is this biological fact enough to exclude her from running track? It in fact raises a much deeper philosophical question about what makes someone female in regards to gender, which seems not to be the IAAF's concern at all.

IAAF only seems to be concerned with biological fact and whether or not this young woman is in fact verifiably "woman-enough" to be categorized as such to race against other women who have all the "right" female body parts. But this is a view so antiquated as to allow articles to be written using the horrible word "hermaphrodite".

What matters here is that Semaneya's privacy has not been protected at all and that her basic sense of self--her gender, her sexuality, and both her sense and her actual reality of who she can be professionally as a track star have been thrown into question by antiquated notions of what it means to be a woman. This is shameful, regrettable, and simply wrong.

With all the other supplementation and enhancements that Olympic and other professional athletes are allowed to use in this day and age, I can hardly see how it is fair that this young woman has been singled out to say that her unique biological make-up can be construed as an advantage for which she should be disqualified. So many other woman work very hard to make their bodies look, feel, and have similar biochemical and hormonal levels not unlike Semenya's.

So perhaps we should just let Semenya run and stop probing her biology, using her as an example, and let her become the person that she was meant to be.

Summer Johnson, PhD

**Note: I have used the pronoun she here to refer to Semenya only as a convention, given that the gender with which she has affiliated herself up to this point has been female.