On January 7th 1991, a baby girl was born in the village of Ga-Masehlong, South Africa. Her parents, Dorus and Jacob, must have been delighted with the arrival of their baby daughter. Little did they know she would go on to become the World Champion in women’s running.

Caster Semenya trained every day, running from village to village. Her hard work and persistence paid off when she won the African Junior Championships in 2009 for both the 800m and the 1500m races. That year, she didn’t just win — she also broke both the Senior and Junior South African records for the 800m race.

It was a big win, and it pushed her to work even harder and to aim even higher. Later that year, she went on to win the gold medal in the 800m World Championships.

And that’s when things took a turn for her.

Not because she slowed down or stopped winning — she continued to win medal after medal. But because fellow athletes and the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) decided that if she was this fast, then something must be wrong.

They proceeded to invade her body with tests that other athletes aren’t subjected to.

Imagine being told as an adult that you’re no longer a woman.

Semenya’s test results

The test results were kept private for the past 10 years, but the recent CAS (Court of Arbitration of Sport) ruling confirms what many had already suspected. Semenya’s body is intersex.

Intersex is a commonly misunderstood term, that refers to individuals born with a developmental condition meaning there’s a mismatch between their chromosomes and their genitalia.

Intersex is not transgender. Transgender people have a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex. Sometimes, they undergo surgery to change their biological make-up to match their gender identity.

In the case of Semenya, she has XY chromosomes, typically regarded as male, but has female outer genitalia.

So should we just erase her?

Her Y chromosome leads to her body:

developing testes and releasing too much testosterone for her to be considered a ‘female’, and at the same time, her body is unable to use her testosterone to develop her body fully into a ‘male’.

Since Semenya didn’t fit into either of our comfortable categories, the IAAF took the decision they felt was logical: ban Semenya, or force her to change.

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels.

The IAAF ruling

The IAAF ruled that Semenya must take testosterone suppressants in order to race.

“I am a woman and I am fast.”

- Caster Semenya

They ruled that her testosterone must be kept below 5nmol/L for at least 6 months prior to her race in order for her to be allowed to compete.

That was the day the IAAF decided that Semenya, as she is, can no longer be a woman. To race as a woman, she must suppress her natural hormones.

Semenya was resilient, and appealed the IAAF’s decision. In 2019, the CAS denied her appeal, and decided to uphold the IAAF’s decision.

Semenya was only tested when she started to win. Imagine being told as an adult that you’re no longer a woman.

IAAF logo.

She has XY chromosomes but she’s not a male

People arguing that Semenya can’t compete in women’s races argue it’s because she has XY chromosomes, and therefore is a male.

But she’s not a male either. Looking simply at biological make-up, her developmental condition means she’s neither male nor female.

These same people argue that she should neither compete in male’s races nor in female races. So should we just erase her? Where do you go when you’re too woman for men, and too man for women?

Forcing Semenya to unnaturally suppress her testosterone is a shocking denial of her humanity.

The controversy of the testosterone advantage

In the very same ruling that declared Semenya must suppress her testosterone, the CAS acknowledged that there’s insufficient evidence linking testosterone to higher athletic performance.

While experts have presented theoretical evidence, the actual evidence on the ground is that athletes with the highest testosterone don’t always win, and athletes with lower levels of testosterone take gold medals home.

Forcing Semenya to suppress her testosterone without due evidence is rash and discriminatory. Biological differences do give some athletes advantages over others. We don’t ask them to suppress those differences to make everyone’s biological make-up equal.

The level of testosterone the IAAF ruled that Semenya must meet is still well above the average for women runners, and keeps Semenya in a middle ground that is neither within the female category nor the male category.

Sports currently doesn’t have a place for intersex individuals. They fit neither into the male category, nor into the female category.

Forcing Semenya to reduce her testosterone isn’t a middle ground to let her compete. The CAS panel itself acknowledged that this ruling was discriminatory, but they felt the discrimination in this case was necessary.

Forcing Semenya to unnaturally suppress her testosterone is a shocking denial of her humanity. Humans come in many shapes and forms, and we need to accommodate that, not suppress our differences.

Photo by MARTIN RICKETT/PA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES.

Let’s not discount hard work

Biological differences and hard work come together to make a runner. Semenya would not be where she is without the enormous amount of hard work and resilience that she put in from an early age, and consistently over the years.

Semenya didn’t win because of her high testosterone levels. She won because she put in the hard work. Let’s not erase that.

The fallacy of ‘justice’ in the sex-division of sports

I hear all the way the commentators who say that sports is currently divided by sex, and the IAAF has to uphold the integrity of this division. Whether or not this division is correct, is a discussion for another time.

It’s a valid argument. However, Semenya’s sex doesn’t clearly fit into either category. She was born a girl, and raised a woman, and the disparity between her gender and her chromosomes only arose when she started winning races and people got suspicious. To tell her when she starts winning that she can no longer be a woman is dehumanising.

The beauty of sports is in how it brings people together and celebrates what we hold in common. We can’t use sports to exclude minorities and suppress our differences.

Sports currently doesn’t have a place for intersex individuals. They fit neither into the male category, nor into the female category.

The IAAF may think it’s upholding justice for the majority by erasing intersex people, but there’s no such thing as justice for the majority when a minority is being erased. Justice isn’t complete without justice for all.

These topics are present now, and they must be addressed now. Our generation doesn’t want its epitaph to read “we kept sports segregated”. We want it to read “we made sports more inclusive”.

Photo by Anthony from Pexels.

Erasure is not the answer

So what’s to be done to be fair to all?

Erasure and suppression of difference is not the answer: inclusion and progress are.

Semenya shouldn’t be forced to suppress her testosterone, a ruling which the CAS panel itself said would be discriminatory and difficult to implement.

Rather, the IAAF and the CAS need to join us in the 21st century, where we’re lucky to have advanced understandings of medical conditions. As the authorities in their field, they need to understand that not everyone can be pigeonholed into comfortable boxes, and that sports needs to be inclusive of everyone.

The beauty of sports is in how it brings people together and celebrates what we hold in common. We can’t use sports to exclude minorities and suppress our differences.

Some individuals are born intersex, and in many ways, they face a lot of disadvantages in their lives. They face bullying from their peers, invasive medical tests, and difficulties being hired for looking different. So if their condition also incurs the advantages of sometimes winning in sports, I say that’s a good thing.

At the very least, the IAAF and the CAS need to wait until they have more conclusive evidence before erasing different people from sports. When they do have the evidence, they need to rethink their categorisations in a way that is more inclusive.

Sports scientist Ross Tucker says women’s sports is a protected category, because if they competed with men, they wouldn’t be able to win. But right now, Caster Semenya is a woman, and she’s not being protected.