It saddens me to see how hysterical South Africa can go over the sexual orientation of a gold-medalist.
Does it really matter whether Caster Semenya takes a piss standing up or sitting down?
According to the Mail&Guardian (Friday 18, September 2009), Leonard Chuene - president of Athletics South Africa - knew about the ambiguity of Semenya's sexuality but decided to allow her to participate at the games in Berlin. Stupid? Not really. Short-sighted? Definately! How the hell does Chuene go about sending an athlete to an international competition without considering the fact that gender-tests may be conducted on her if her femininity is dubious? Then, he has the bright idea of denying that he ever knew anything of Semenya's ambiguous sexuality?
Worse than this, you have South Africans protesting and claiming that gender-tests were only conducted on Semenya because she is a black. Really now, as if you cannot see the mountain-like structure of her shoulders (not to mention an abdominal section that would intimidate even the fittest of men)!
What really got to me, however, is the fact that the very same issue of Mail&Guardian published two stories on inter-sexed indidivuals and tried unsuccessfully to relate them to Semenya. The stories are about individuals somewhere, in some badly named towns in Africa who grew up as girls and realised all of a sudden, after a number of years, that they had a penis - as if you don't notice when you have an extra leg dangling between your thighs that occassionaly stands erect in defiance of the law of gravity and other physics. Great detail is given about the hardships and suffering that these 'inter-sexed individuals' (because the word hermaphrodite isn't appropriate anymore) experienced whilst growing up and how they are now happy that they can finally be accepted as real men because their vaginas have been zipped up blah blah blah...
Question: what on earth does that have to do with Semenya?! The woman is a female, get over it. She doesn't have the extra niggly bits that Lady Gaga is rumoured to have.
Her victory at Berlin has been over-looked by unmotivated accusations and even crazier justifications for them. Yes, there is no denying that the girl looks like a man, but that should not be what South Africa is focusing on. At the end of the day, Semenya is a winner - boyish or not.
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