[News] Caster Semenya Aint 8 Feet Tall

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Caster Semenya Aint 8 Feet Tall

August 27, 2009 By Dave Zirin

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22447

If you aspire to be a star woman athlete but have no aspirations to 
appear in Playboy's Women of the Olympics issue, you are far better 
off being from South Africa than the United States. The Western 
media's handling of the story of Caster Semenya, the 
gold-medal-winning 18-year-old South African runner, has been at best 
simplistic and at worst repellent. In a salacious, drooling tone, "Is 
she really a he?" is the extent of their curiosity. On various radio 
shows, I've been asked, "Why does she talk like a man?" No one 
defines what "a man" is supposed to talk like. Or, "Do you think 
she's really a dude? Is this a Crying Game thing?" I've heard it all 
this week, and most of the questions say far more about the 
insecurities of the questioners than about Semenya's situation.

It's not just in the confederate confines of sports radio. I appeared 
on Campbell Brown's CNN show, where my co-panelist, Dr. Jennifer 
Berman, said that suspicion of Semenya's gender was justified because 
she is "8 feet tall" (she's 5-foot-7). How an 18-year-old runner 
became Yao Ming in Dr. Berman's mind was never addressed. This is 
hysteria, pure and simple, and it is born out of people's own 
discomfort with women athletes who don't conform to gender 
stereotypes. In South Africa, however, the response could not be more 
different. Semenya was greeted by thousands of people in a 
celebration that included signs and songs from the antiapartheid struggle.

She was even embraced by former South African first lady Winnie 
Mandela. "We are here to tell the whole world how proud we are of our 
little girl," Mandela told cheering fans. "They can write what they 
like--we are proud of her."

As Patrick Bond, a leading South African global justice activist, 
said to me, "To order Semenya tested for gender seems about as 
reasonable as ordering IAAF officials like Philip Weiss tested for 
brain cells--which actually isn't a bad idea given his recent 
off-field performance. And if Weiss doesn't have a sufficient number 
of brain cells to know how to treat women athletes, it would only be 
fair to relieve him of his functions for the good of world athletics."

It's not just national political figures with global profiles who are 
embracing Semenya.

The people have rallied around her fiercely, particularly in the very 
rural, impoverished, subsistence-farming community where Semenya was 
raised. Her home village, Masehlong, has an unemployment rate near 80 
percent. They only recently acquired electricity.

As The Guardian recently wrote:

The loyalty of Semenya's friends and neighbours is striking. South 
Africa's rural communities are typically regarded as bastions of 
social conservatism divided into traditional gender roles and 
expectations of femininity. But there is no evidence that Semenya, an 
androgynous tomboy who played football and wore trousers, was 
ostracised by her peers. Instead, they are shocked at what they 
perceive as the intolerance and prurience of western commentators. 
'They are jealous,' said Dorcus Semenya, the athlete's mother, who 
led villagers in jubilant singing and dancing on Friday. "I say to 
them, go to hell, you don't know what you're saying. They're jealous 
because they don't want black people improving their status.' It 
perhaps shouldn't be so surprising that they recognize the West's 
"intolerance and prurience." Unlike the United States, South Africa 
has same-sex marriage.

The Afican National Congress Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe 
Mapisa-Nqakula, while arguing in favor of legalizing same-sex 
marriage, said, "In breaking with our past...we need to fight and 
resist all forms of discrimination and prejudice, including homophobia."

Unlike the United States', South Africa's Constitution formally 
prohibits discrimination based on sexuality. The Constitution reads:

The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly 
against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, 
pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual 
orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, 
language and birth. This does not to mean South Africa is some sort 
of Shangri-La for LGBT people. But it does suggest the United States 
can stand to learn at thing or two about discrimination and human sexuality.

There is currently no definitive information regarding Semenya's 
sexual orientation or gender choice. We know she identifies herself 
as an 18-year-old woman and she can run like the wind while not 
looking like a conventional pinup.

Unfortunately for women athletes, you can't be too masculine for fear 
you'll be called a lesbian. You can't be too aggressive for fear that 
you will be called mannish. You must be an outdated stereotype of a 
woman before you are an athlete. You must market yourself as 
nonthreatening and blazingly heterosexual.

The most famous female athlete of the first half of the twentieth 
century was Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson. She won three medals in 
track and field in the 1932 Olympics and also became the standard for 
all women golfers. Yet despite her towering athletic accomplishments, 
Didrikson was denounced as "mannish," "not-quite female" and a 
"Muscle Moll" who could not "compete with other girls in the very 
ancient and time honored sport of mantrapping."

Hearing that in addition to track and field she also played 
basketball, football and numerous other sports, an astonished 
journalist asked Didrikson, "Is there anything you don't play?" 
Without missing a beat, she reportedly answered, "Yeah, dolls."

 From Babe Didrikson to Caster Semenya, to paraphrase the ad for 
Virginia Slims: you've come a long way... maybe.


[Dave Zirin is the author of "A People's History of Sports in the 
United States" (The New Press) Receive his column every week by 
emailing dave at edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports at gmail.com.]




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