Double Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya has announced that she will challenge the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) new ban on intersex and trans athletes. She’s also encouraging fellow Olympians to join her in a class action lawsuit.
On Thursday 26 March, the IOC announced that it was reinstating mandatory sex testing for eligibility to compete in women’s athletics. It plans to require all participants to undergo an SRY test, which detects the presence of a Y-chromosome-linked gene.
Caster Semenya: ‘I was told I needed to have surgery’
Semenya has become a figurehead of the battle around the borderlines of women’s sport after facing years of highly public legal battles over her natural testosterone levels. In an article for the *New York Times,*she explained that:
In 2009, as I prepared to run in the Berlin World Championships, athletic authorities sent me for some medical testing. Because of my looks, there had been speculation from my fellow athletes, sports officials, the media and fans that I was not what I said I was.
I arrived at the medical appointment expecting to be checked for performance-enhancing drugs. Instead, at age 18, I had my first gynecological exam. Afterward, I learned that I had XY chromosomes, rather than the typically female XX pairing, and high levels of testosterone, produced by undescended testicles I didn’t know I had. In order to continue racing as a woman, I was told, I needed to have surgery to remove them.
After Semenya refused to undergo the unnecessary operation, authorities instead required her to take medication to lower her testosterone. The medication caused extreme fatigue, nausea, headaches, and brain fog. When Semenya stopped taking it, she was barred from competing, and instead became a coach.
Despite having lived her entire life as a woman, the IOC’s new document refers to people like Semenya as “biological males”. It insists that this “does not and cannot change”.
‘It came as a failure’
As such, it’s unsurprising that Semenya has been a vocal critic of the IOC’s ruling, and its new president, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe. On Sunday 29 March, at a press conference in Cape Town, Semenya said of Coventry that:
For me, personally, for her being a woman coming from Africa, knowing how African women or women in the global south are affected by that, of course, it causes harm.
Black and brown women have been targeted by a disproportionate level of arbitrary sex testing in sports.
Semenya went on to criticise the IOC’s previous requirement for sex testing:
It came as a failure. And that’s why it was dropped.
For you as a woman, why will you be tested to prove that you fit? You know, it’s like now we need to prove that we are worthy as women to take part in sports. That’s a disrespect for women.
The IOC abandoned its previous requirement of blanket sex tests for women in 1999. The tests were of questionable scientific merit, and often caused severe identity crisis, social isolation, demeaning reactions from the public, depression, and suicide.
Following its U-turn, the IOC will now require girls to take the test from age 15 and up.
‘It does not save women’s sport’
In an exclusive interview with*Sky News,*Semenya stated that:
I’m fighting for women’s dignity. Those who say, ‘I am not going to be tested to prove that I’m a woman’ … I will encourage them to do that to stop this nonsense.
As such, she also announced her plans to tackle the IOC in court:
I will encourage athletes to come together as a class action … because this does not make sense. It does not save women’s sport.
The interviewer questioned Semenya on the IOC’s new guidance. It states that there is a “10-12 per cent Male performance advantage” in running and swimming, and up to 100% in punching and lifting sports.
However, the document somehow failed to mention that intersex and trans athletes often reduce their testosterone. Just five years ago, the IOC held that this eliminated their potential advantage.
Semenya replied:
Based on what? There’s no scientific proof about what has been said. It’s an ideology.
She’s right to question the IOC’s science, given that the Olympic body has failed to share it with the public. What we do know is that this latest ruling completely contradicts the IOC’s science from just five years ago, which stated that trans people “should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage”.
The IOC’s ‘new science’ now happens to align with the views of Donald Trump. When he came to office, the far-right American president moved to ban trans athletes from all sport in the US. This is particularly convenient, given Los Angeles will host the next Olympic games.
Ideology over all
Semenya is also correct in her statement that this is an ideological battle. In the Guardian’sarticle on Semenya’s criticism of the IOC, it states that:
The best-known DSD [difference of sex development] athlete of recent years is Semenya, who has male XY chromosomes.
Semenya doesn’t have ‘male XY chromosomes’. She has XY chromosomes – she hasn’t nicked them from some bloke; she’s a woman, who has lived her whole life as a woman. These are neutral statements that nobody – not even Semenya herself – started questioning until she started winning.
Across humanity, both sex and gender are a spectrum filled with countless variations. The belief that men have XY chromosomes and women have XX chromosomes is just that – a belief. It isn’t a fact – in fact, it’s demonstrably false, as in Semenya’s case.
We’re told that the distinction is natural, and therefore good and right. In fact, the distinction is so natural that we require women like Semenya (and countless intersex babies) to undergo unnecessary, often non-consensual surgeries and take medication in order to make them more ‘natural.’
Separating men and women into two distinct categories and insisting that they can never meet is a legal fiction. It relies on the perpetuation of intersexist and transphobic violence against anyone caught in the borderlands. Natural, universal distinctions don’t need police at their boundaries.
Featured image via the Canary
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