Semenya decision confirms tyranny of ignorance

“I don’t have to be what you want me to be.” – Muhammad Ali

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

NOW what? Because, whatever the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has closed its eyes, ears, hearts and minds to say, Caster Semenya cannot be wished away.

The International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) have, in effect, told Semenya she isn’t who she is, and in Lausanne on Wednesday CAS wasted the chance to tell the IAAF they’re wrong.

In a decision that took 165 pages of explaining, CAS said it had “found that the [IAAF’s] DSD [Difference in Sexual Development] regulations are discriminatory, but the majority of the panel found that, on the basis of the evidence submitted by the parties, such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF’s aim of preserving the integrity of female athletics”.

Semenya’s integrity, then, is less important and expendable than that of other people, particularly those who can’t keep up with her, whose dignity matters more than hers. But she — and I do mean she — will not be airbrushed out of the annals. Her integrity is intact, her dignity though attacked is unchinked. She is and will remain as real as a battered woman’s broken bones.

A black woman, at that. And a black woman who not only refuses to genuflect to the race and gender stereotypes others have created for her but, rightfully, rejects it with contempt.

How many straight white men do you know who would not be enraged by the view that society should accept them only if they were not straight, white and male? Welcome to Semenya’s world.

By rejecting her appeal against the IAAF’s opinion of who is a woman, CAS has confirmed the tyranny of the ignorant.     

But there can be no erase and rewind to a time when men were men and women were women and only a fool couldn’t tell the difference. And there shouldn’t be, because that was a bad time — when only men worked and only women kept house and raised children, when it didn’t matter how much plastic and petrol we pumped into the world, when we stuck pencils into people’s hair to establish their race and therefore determine the boundaries of their existence, when the poor were poor because they wanted to be and not because the rich had designed life that way.

We know better now. Pertinently, we know that who is a man and who is a woman is not at all certain, and we know that it is not our place to tell others which they are. At least, we should know those truths. Wednesday’s decision is, sadly, proof that we don’t.

Is it unfair on other women that they should have to try and beat Semenya, who through no fault of her own was born a drug cheat? Hell yes. Is it fair that the best the IAAF can come up with to level the race track is to order Semenya to pump herself with drugs to lower her testosterone levels? Hell no. 

But there are bigger issues afoot here. Semenya’s plight has caught the mood of a black world that has, not before time, run out of patience with a white world that has historically thought nothing of exploiting the black body for its own gain.

From slavery to colonialism to apartheid to Britain inviting West Indians to come and help them rebuild their country in the wake of the Second World War and then, decades after they answered that call and added richly to the culture of their adopted home, deporting them back from whence they came, the black body has been a commodity; a resource to be used and replaced as required by its self-appointed white overseers.

Like Muhammad Ali before her, Semenya is refusing not only to be one of those exploited black bodies but to accept that whites — or men, or straight people, or anyone — have the authority to define her.

In Miami on February 26, 1964, the morning after he had beaten Sonny Liston to claim the world heavyweight title, the man who had until then been known as Cassius Clay told the assembled white, male, probably mostly straight press: “I believe in Allah and in peace. I don’t try and move into white neighbourhoods. I don’t want to marry white women. I was baptised when I was 12, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not a Christian anymore. I know where I’m going, and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”

You can argue with some of that and take umbrage at other parts of it. But it was, is and always will be the bulletproof truth that “I don’t have to be what you want me to be”.

Fifty-five years on, we still haven’t accepted that truth. Now what?

Former foe explains why she was wrong about Semenya

“Does Caster outrule the seven other people she’s racing? Whose human rights are more important?” – Sharron Davies, British Olympic swimmer

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

CASTER Semenya seems to have as many enemies as friends in her fight against athletics’ officials attempts to rob her of her natural advantage in the cause of protecting less endowed competitors.

But one of her former detractors, who is among the many opponents Semenya has left in her wake on the track, now counts herself as an ally of the South African.

Madeleine Pape represented Australia in the 800 metres for Australia at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin — where she encountered Semenya.  

“In 2009 I watched the women’s 800m final from the stands as Semenya crossed the finish line more than two seconds clear of the pack,” Pape wrote in an article published by the Guardian on Wednesday.

“At the time, it was by far the path of least resistance for me to join the chorus of voices condemning her performance as ‘unfair’.”

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) concurred with that view on Wednesday, dismissing Semenya’s appeal against the International Association of Athletics Federation’s (IAAF) requirement that female athletes whose amount of testosterone is — as hers is — higher than a stipulated level will need to lower it before they are allowed to compete in certain races.

“Nobody in my orbit presented an alternative viewpoint or held me to account for my own uninformed opinions,” Pape wrote.

“It was all a rather convenient state of affairs for an athlete seeking consolation for their poor performance in the heats a few days earlier.”

Injury ended Pape’s career, and by 2013 she was studying for a PhD in sociology in the United States.

“Quite unexpectedly, I found myself taking a class where I was made to revisit what had unfolded at those [2009] championships.

“For the first time, I encountered the vast literature written by advocates of women’s sport who oppose the exclusion of women athletes with naturally high testosterone for both scientific and ethical reasons: scientifically, because biological sex and athletic ability are both far too complex for scientists to reduce to measures of testosterone, and ethically, because these regulatory efforts have always been characterised by considerable harm to the women athletes singled out for testing.

“While I was initially confronted and confused by this discovery, I eventually began to question the convictions about fairness and sex difference that I had long held as an athlete.

“Critically, during this time I also befriended some women with high testosterone. Enter another complicating factor: scientific and ethical concerns aside, was I willing to recognise my friends as women outside of sport yet deny them the right to compete alongside me on the track? The short answer, I realised, was no.

“The issue had shifted from one I could keep at a distance and discuss in the abstract to one that implicated the lives of people I actually knew and cared about.”

Pape’s evolved thinking led her to testify in support of Dutee Chand — an India athlete who, like Semenya, has a condition called Difference in Sexual Development [DSD] — in another CAS case brought against an earlier set of IAAF regulations.

“One year later, Semenya stormed to victory in the women’s 800 metres at the Rio Olympics. I felt regret: not at her gold medal, but at the vicious response from the track-and-field community to both her and other medallists accused of having high testosterone and hence an allegedly ‘unfair’ advantage. Had so little changed since 2009?”

Talking to the BBC on Thursday in reaction to Wednesday’s court decision, Sharron Davies, who won silver for Britain in the 400 metre individual medley at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, built a counter argument: “It is such a complicated situation. My heart does go out to Caster because it’s not her fault, however you look at this.

“But 50% of the world are born female; are XX [chromosomes] and they need to be protected and given a level playing field. Ten years from now, if we’re not careful, all the men’s world records will be held by men and all the women’s world records will be held by women that have a Y chromosome. That’s just not fair.

“Does Caster outrule the seven other people she’s racing? Whose human rights are more important?”

Davies warned darkly that “there are agents who go out looking for young girls who are DSD so they can sign them up and make a lot of money”.

Those against Semenya competing in women’s events often cite their opinion that she “looks like a man” as evidence of her ineligibility.

They might be interested to know that Davies is, at 1.8 metres, two centimetres taller than Semenya.

But Davies is white, has long blonde hair and blue eyes, has gone from appearing in the sport section of newspapers to the fashion and celebrity pages, and has been open about her use of cosmetic surgery to enhance her appearance.

She fits the stereotype of what society says a woman should look like.

Maybe that’s the real difference between women like Davies and women like Semenya.

Caster Semenya is a lightning rod for anger at South Africa’s wider, ongoing, deepening failings

No-one can tell Semenya she’s not a woman, and no-one can tell other women it’s fair that they should have to compete against a born drug cheat.

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

“VOT is your surname,” Levi, a Joburg ancient as kindly as he is venerable who tells astonishing stories about growing up communist on a kibbutz, asked earnestly after struggling, several times, to say my first name on our first meeting.

“Vice,” I replied, and waited for what I suspected was coming. It did.

“Weiss?!”

“Yes, Vice.”

Levi jolted with joy. His eyes, until then rheumy, leapt with life. He threw up his hands with happiness: “Weiss! Mazeltov! You bloody fucking jew! Just like me!”

I didn’t disabuse him of the notion, not only because that would have been cruel but also because I didn’t want to. Before you take issue with that, try some babka. Chocolate, preferably.

Another question came my way from a woman at a charcuterie stall at Victoria Park market in London’s East End on Sunday: “Are you jewish?”

She asked after our thoroughly Seffrican accents chimed and it transpired we had both come to the other hemisphere from Cape Town; she from Durbanville, me from Sea Point.

Hence her question. Sea Point thrums with jewishness, from venerable ancients like Levi resolutely observing the sabbath, to kitke everywhere on Fridays, bagels everywhere every day, and homemade pastrami at the wonderful Kleinskys Deli in Regent Road, to the shul on Marais Road, a landmark to all.

“No,” I replied to her without thinking too much. But then I got to thinking …

Pieter-Dirk Uys discovered only after the death of his mother, Helga Bassel, in 2003 that she was jewish. Which, technically, makes him jewish. No-one in my family has, to my knowledge, spoken of jewishness in our genes. But my father was adopted. So who can know?

And who can tell Caster Semenya she’s not a woman? No-one. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) denies they are trying to, but they cannot say they are not trying to tell us who they will allow to compete as women in athletics events meant exclusively for women.

The IAAF are attempting to say who — in their purview — is a woman. Or who they will accept as a woman. That’s hopelessly ambitious, because straight answers on the subject, like good men, are hard to find.

Here’s Medicine Net’s stab at it: “The traditional definition of female was ‘an individual of the sex that bears young’ or ‘that produces ova or eggs’. However, things are not so simple today. Female can be defined by physical appearance, by chromosome constitution (see female chromosome complement), or by gender identification.”

What, exactly, is a female chromosome complement? “The large majority of females have a 46, XX chromosome complement (46 chromosomes including two X chromosomes). A minority of females have other chromosome constitutions such as 45,X (45 chromosomes including only one X chromosome) and 47,XXX (47 chromosomes including three X chromosomes).”

Easy for them to say. Not so easy for radical feminist Julie Bindel, who was quoted as saying in the New Statesman in September 2013: “I have no idea what it feels like to be a woman. I don’t do gender. It is harmful and a total social construct that serves to reinforce patriarchy and women’s subordination to men. I wish to eradicate gender — that is the feminist goal — but for now we need to keep the identity of ‘female’ in order to track how our oppression is effecting [sic] us, for example, how many women are raped, underpaid, killed by violent partners, etc.”

Who or what does the Oxford Dictionary recognise as female? “Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilised by male gametes.”

That would seem to question the status of any apparent female who hasn’t yet procreated. Or who has procreated and no longer does, or might not. Reasons of age, health and personal choice don’t appear to matter: it’s all about having children. And when thou art done with that get thyself, barefoot, of course, back to yonder kitchen and chain thyself to the stove. Amen.

Happily, the Caster question is far simpler. Here’s what matters — Semenya is unimpeachably correct to maintain that she is as she has always been naturally a woman and is thus entitled to compete against other women. If those other women can’t keep up, how is that her problem?

Fine. Except if you’re those women, who know that Semenya leaves them in her dust because her body produces more testosterone than theirs. That is patently unfair: they are trying to beat someone who was born a drug cheat.

But how do you fairly instruct Semenya and others like her to wilfully dull the edge nature has given them? The National Basketball Association (NBA) doesn’t ensure the playing field is more or less level by amputating a few centimetres from the legs of taller players.

Thing is, only two of all the 450 players in last season’s NBA were shorter than six feet. Fifteen towered over seven feet. So 433 of them — 96.22% — were within a dozen inches of each other: a more of less level playing field without the need for intervention.

Of course, height doesn’t govern ability on the court, as the superb Isiah Thomas, all five-foot-nine of him, has made abundantly clear. But what will happen when Thomas’ opponents loom at eight feet and have arms as long as he is tall? Welcome, Semenya’s would-be competitors say, to their world.

No less sensible a figure as Martina Navratilova managed to support Semenya and rubbish the cause of transgender athletes all in the same few hundred words in the UK Sunday Times.

Navratilova wondered whether it could “be right to order athletes to take medication” and said she hoped Semenya wins her case on the issue at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. But Navratilova also said that a man could by taking hormones satisfy sport organisations’ requirements to be considered a woman was “insane and … cheating”.

In December, she tweeted: “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women.”

Not so simple, is it? And exponentially less so when all sorts of opportunists have spied a chance to make capital out of Semenya’s situation.

Sports minister Thokozile Xasa reached, shamefully, for the nuclear option: “The world once declared apartheid a crime against human rights. We once more call the world to stand with us as we fight what we believe is a gross violation of human rights.”

Her time would be better spent helping her inept government find ways, nuclear perhaps included, to keep the lights on in failing Mzansi.

In April last year EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi tried to cover all the bases, albeit mercifully briefly: “The EFF views the action of [the] IAAF as a deliberate, sexist, racist and anti-African attack on our black female champion.”

He forgot to put the LGBTQI community on the list. Maybe they aren’t the bombastic, buffoonish beret brigade’s target market in a country where women are murdered for refusing sexual advances from men.

Cricket South Africa clambered aboard with a release on Friday in which chief executive Thabang Moroe was quoted as saying: “We stand here as the cricket fraternity joining all the voices throughout the world to denounce the IAAF Gender Regulations as an act of discrimination against women in sport.

“We state categorically and emphatically that women like Caster, who is born with intersex variations, should enjoy the same rights to dignity as all women. We honour, celebrate and recognise the equality of all women in sport.

“ … we call on all morally astute global citizens to rally behind Caster and vocally join in advocating for her right to continue competing at the highest level.

“This attempt at systematically ostracising potential and talent should be condemned in the strongest terms. Together, let’s hit gender discrimination for six!”

CSA should concentrate on tasking the “morally astute global citizens” in their ranks to ensure the women who play for the national team are paid as much as the men. That’s what equality and dignity mean.

Would Semenya’s cause be so vociferously supported if she wasn’t so successful? Or if her success didn’t override the gag reflex of a deeply conservative society that has next to no compassion for those who differ from the mob-like majority?

Or if more black South Africans were by now living the kind of lives they earned the hardest way, by defeating apartheid? Or if apartheid had been eradicated instead of entrenched on economic lines by an evilly cynical ruling class ? Or if this wasn’t an election year? Or if the bellicose, bilious centre-right mess the ANC have become had a clue how to be the inspired revolutionaries they once were and need to be again if South Africa is to have a future worth having? Or if the hopeless misery that is the DA had any ideas of their own beyond flaccidly attacking the ANC? Or if the EFF weren’t such an unfunny joke? Or if Semenya was white?

We can’t really know who Semenya is. But we know what: a lightning rod for the coming storm.