the predicament of a world- class runner

8/9/2019 The Predicament of a World- Class Runner

1/5

Woman, Man, or Neither? The

predicament of a World- class

Runner

Elizabeth Reis

Caster Semenya, the South African runner who won thewomen's 800-meter race at the World TrackChampionships in Berlin last month, has been unofficiallydeclared intersexed. If she is, it means that she was bornwith some discrepancy between her external genitals,

internal sex anatomy (ovaries or testes and her hormonesand chromosomes.

The International Association of Athletic Federations(IAAF) will not make its official ruling as to whether itconsiders Semenya a woman until November, but an


2/5

increasing number of news outlets around the world havereported that she's "a hermaphrodite." What does thismean, exactly? The media's terminology itself reflects theignorance and confusion surrounding intersex. Doctors

and informed lay people no longer use the wordhermaphrodite because it is vague, demeaning andsensationalistic. "Hermaphrodite" continues to conjureimages of mythical creatures, perhaps even monstersand freaks. It's thus not surprising that most haverejected the label.

Historically, hermaphrodite has been one of the moreneutral descriptors of those born with atypical sexdevelopment. Derogatory terms such as "freak ofnature," "hybrid," "impostor," "sexual pervert," and"unfortunate creature" pervade early American medicalliterature. In one standard 19th-century text onmalformations, one doctors referred to "these mortifyingand disgusting imperfections."

Intersex bodies have always aroused suspicion. But many

people's distrust of them has not been limited to theplaying fields, nor is it new. Throughout American history,doctors and lay people in authority have assumed thatthose born with atypical bodies were dishonest andfraudulent (say, in illegally voting when the franchise waslimited to men), or were seeking illegal sexual relations.

These authorities persistently tried to define ambiguousbodies as either male or female.

Yet over the years doctors' evaluations of intersex bodieshave shifted. In the 1920s and 1930s, for example, aperson with a female-appearing body would have beencounseled to undergo surgery in order to appear morelike a man because of her internal testes, particularly if


3/5

doctors discovered that she was sexually attracted towomen. In the 1940s, doctors turned to the new field ofpsychology to guide their decisions and determined thatit was more sensible to let such an individual continue

living as a woman, if she so chose.

These "medical" decisions were informed by socialanxieties and therapeutic trends, not scientific findings.From the 1950s onward, doctors have tried to intervenesurgically at infancy, before patients had a chance todevelop an identity as female or male. Doctors woulddecide an intersex baby's gender primarily by how wellthey thought the external genitals could be surgicallyreshaped to appear "normal."

The thinking was that there was a window of opportunityin which a baby's gender could go either way. All it tookwas the parents' unwavering commitment toward raisingeither a boy or a girl, and this could only happen, doctorsbelieved, if the baby's genitals looked distinctly male orfemale. Nurture, they believed, trumped nature,

particularly when nature seemed confused.In each era, attitudes toward intersex bodies haveexpressed the social norms of their time and place.

Today, the response to Caster Semenya highlights thepervasive yet misguided insistence that the sexes areunambiguously distinct and easily distinguishable. Assome declare Semenya too manly to compete, forexample, a popular South African magazine features a

glamorously feminine Semenya on its cover, as if shewere Oprah. Real life is more complicated.

If Semenya has female external anatomy but maleinternal anatomy, as the recent reports suggest, is she awoman or a man? Medical authorities have ponderedsuch cases for years, and only one thing seems clear:


4/5

interpretation of these findings is as much (or even more)social than scientific.

Today authorities (like the IAAF) have spent much time

trying to determine intersexed people's "true sex." Theirefforts have been invasive and sometimes degrading andembarrassing to women like Caster Semenya.

And what's the point? Our two-gendered world forces allpeople to be classified as male or female even when theboundaries are more blurred than we imagine. We simplydo not have a social category for intersex people, despitethe fact that intersex occurs in one out of every 2000

births.We necessarily make social decisions about whether toraise an intersex baby as a boy or a girl. Once thesedecisions have been made, we should honor a family's

judgment. Caster Semenya was raised as a girl, considersherself a woman, and is regarded as a woman by hercommunity. Yet now she has had to submit to ahumiliating public inspection and deal with new

knowledge about her body that casts doubt upon heridentity as well as her integrity.Intersex people have endured such scrutiny for yearsbecause their bodies posed a threat to our assumptionthat the male and female are completely distinctcategories. Perhaps Semenya's test results with herpublic defense will challenge this notion.

In recent years, the medical world has made strides inletting intersex bodies stay as they are by holding off oninfant surgeries and by letting people decide forthemselves about their own bodies when they are adults.

This autonomy is a good thing; it gives credit to theperson himself or herself.


5/5

Elizabeth Reis is the author of "Bodies in Doubt: AnAmerican History of Intersex" (2009). She is an associateprofessor of women's and gender studies and history atthe University of Oregon in Eugene and a writer for the

History News Service.

the predicament of a world- class runner

Documents