The Wrong Body?: A Cry for Multiple Considerations of Sex and Gender

The Wrong Body?

Caster Semenya, A Cry for Multiple Considerations of Sex and Gender

Shayna Goncalves

Shayna Goncalves

The Wrong Body?: Caster Semenya, A Cry for Multiple Considerations of Sex and Gender

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Contents

Introduction

Meet Caster Semenya

Hermaphrodites and/in Society…

The Racing Track is a Bathroom Problem

What is Feminine? What Should Semenya have looked like?

Conclusion

Introduction

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When starting this paper I found the need to ask myself why it is necessary to understand gender

definitions, but my belief that there are gender identities that exist beyond normative classifications

of masculinity and femininity has led to my rather obvious resonance with feminist and gender

studies as a potent and relevant field in which to search for my answer through the less obvious and

gender ambiguous body –the hermaphrodite.

When people absent mindedly describe certain things as feminine or others as masculine they

unconsciously reify hegemonically defined gender stereotypes that solicit acceptable styles and

types of feminine or masculine which exclude any other gender modalities that resultantly become

classified as abnormal. Not fitting a gender profile that has been constructed by society makes a

hermaphrodite abnormal. Unless they choose a recognizable and an acceptable sex and gender,

hermaphrodites are denied access to everyday things. Everyday things such as using the bathroom,

stating one’s sex on an application form, or even obtaining a passport are sites of privilege when

considered in relation to a hermaphrodite’s position, who is neither man nor woman but has

attributes of both sexes, making the person “a sort of double sex” (Dreger 1998, 31). Embodying the

characteristics of both sexes means people who are hermaphrodites are often excluded socially and

sometimes occupationally -in their desired careers. The South African athlete Caster Semenya best

exposes how bureaucratic agents symbolise society’s reaction to people who do not fit limited sex

binaries. The articles that I found and sited herein state that Semenya is a hermaphrodite. Despite,

as the articles imply, being comfortable and secure with her sex, Semenya was subject to gender

testing with the risk of being unable to compete as a runner if these tests did not prove that she

was/is biologically female. This shows that even though Semenya was framed as finding solace in her

own gender identity, she still faced rejection from her career, and regardless of the result she was

ostracised and bullied for being abnormal. In Semenya’s case, society’s sex and gender police came

in the form of major athletics corporations named the International Association of Athletics

Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) who served the purpose of

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reminding Semenya (and all other ambiguously sexed and gendered people) of the many factors in

life that will force individuals to choose one of the two ‘acceptable’ forms of gender.

Judith Butler (2004; 2006) and Judith/Jack Halberstam (2005) assert for a redefinition of gender or

even for a transgression and transcendence of gender definition as a whole but because this seems

unrealistic, at least for the world in which I currently live, it seems more feasible to assert for a

broader consideration of gender identities that do not restrict individuals to a choice between two.

While Butler and Halberstam argue that women are oppressed by being forced into conforming to

historically constructed forms of femininity, hermaphrodites suffer oppression that is much more

damaging. Hermaphrodites’ bodies are rejected from the start, as a sex that should not exist. Before

even reaching a point when they are able to understand how to perform a gender identity, the

hermaphrodite body is altered, modified, corrected as if its materiality is wrong. From birth,

hermaphrodites are not even given the agency to choose their sex as “medical and scientific men”

(Dreger 1998, 30) arbitrarily determine which sex is most appropriate based on biological structures

such as dominant gonads, genitals, or hormones. By choosing a hermaphrodite’s sex, medical and

scientific men assume an inherent link between sex and gender, thus imposing a gender identity

onto hermaphrodite bodies. Anxiety within the hermaphrodite body is thus inevitable as they are

made to believe that their material bodies are wrong and then compelled to perform a gender based

on a sex that may have been imposed onto them.

I use Semenya’s case as being labelled hermaphrodite to show society’s treatment of and anxiety

around bodies that do not fit the gender binary. I am not qualified to make the decision that

hermaphrodites should be left to live their lives as hermaphrodites, as Oren Yaniv of the New York

Daily News states that living with this condition is life threatening (Yaniv 2009). I do not know if this

is true and I do not accept it as truth nor should I entirely dismiss it as yet another (pseudo)scientific

fact relayed to us to dissuade us from appreciating this body. Nevertheless, I think that Semenya’s

case shows that hegemonic heterosexual males in society will push the limits of morality, or

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compassion for humanity to objectify a human being by putting her under tests that completely

eradicate any power she may possess over her own body and subjecthood all so that she may not be

a threat to patriarchal men and matriarchal women to whom she is competition. More specifically

Ariel Levy, who is a writer for The New Yorker, insinuates that Semenya’s role as a South African

athlete that is capable of winning gold medals for the country was more beneficial to the South

Africa’s international reputation than any trauma she may have experienced while being tested

(Levy 2009).

My research essay aims to add to Butler and Halberstams’ theories on gender by agreeing that

gender and sex are not inextricably linked, that gender identity is constantly and continuously

defined and performed by individual bodies. I agree with them that the general notion that gender

identity and sexual orientation being based on an individual’s sex at birth need to be demolished

however, I also think that there needs to be a broader consideration of sexes and genders that does

not only include female/male, masculinity/femininity, or gay/bisexual/heterosexual. Alice Domurat

Dreger is the author of Hermaphrodites and the Medical Intervention of Sex (1998) and has written

that one reason for sex differentiation is that it allows individuals the ability to understand the

anatomical make-up of their bodies during the course of their lives (Dreger 1998, 8). For instance, a

woman, because she is a biological woman, knows that at some point in her adolescent life, she can

expect the initiation of her menstrual cycle. Not to say that this makes her feminine or that that her

reproductive organs are ready to partner up with a man but simply that she understands what may

be occurring when she notices a release of blood once she reaches a certain age. Hermaphrodites

ought to be given the same treatment. Enough research needs to be done about the hermaphrodite

body so that that body can exist for itself rather than be (under-)classified as a body that is medically

problematic. Research ought to show what a hermaphrodite is in an inclusive non-reductive way,

and show what can be expected of this body in the life time of the individual so that hermaphrodites

may live as hermaphrodites. If hermaphrodites are scientifically defined as a sex then a field of

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different ways of existing as a sex will be opened up. I realise that forming definitions comes with

the complexity of excluding other types or groups of individuals as well as homogenising

hermaphrodites, but this is not what I intend; and this is probably why transcending definitions is

ideal. However, for this paper I aim to study a material body that is not fashioned or performed but

comes born from a womb as wrongly-sexed and is so dismissed by society that it has come to denote

a medical condition, or disability (Levy 2009) rather than accepted as a sex and gender.

Initially, I had intended on looking at the hermaphrodite body with Semenya as an example but

instead I have decided to focus on the way Semenyas body has been portrayed and published in the

media. I am not looking at Semenya herself because little has been documented showing her own

individual perspective and thoughts. Although, many sources state that her family and friends

consider her as a woman which implies that Semenya might think of herself as a woman too thus, I

do not want to argue that she should comfortably consider herself a hermaphrodite. In addition this

also explains my use of ‘her’ or ‘she’ as gender pronouns in my discussion of Semenya. Caster

Semenya should be given the agency to choose and perform her own gender identity. By analysing

how different media sources have constructed a definition of Semenya’s sex, I want to show that

some sources have discriminated against Semenya and others have tried to objectively defend her

by fighting against ‘feminine policing’, yet both arguments are for or against her being considered a

woman, none assert for her being accepted as a hermaphrodite. The way these news media articles

have dissected and drawn conclusions about Semenya’s body shows that contemporary society is

not tolerable of people who are gender different. Even when being defended , Semenya was

defended as “a female athlete” ( Stephanie Findlay, Toronto Star 2012) by whom Julias Malema (the

former ANC Youth League leader) terms as the “foreign owned media” (Mail and Guardian 2009)

says; but this still forces a feminine gender identity onto her, and thus still considers hermaphrodite

as a polluted, poisoned, unlawful body (Butler 2006, 131-133)

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Meet Caster Semenya

Caster Semenya is a South African athlete who grew up in the town, Masehlong located in the

province of Limpopo which is North of South Africa. International media have described Masehlong

and Limpopo as impoverished, pre-modern, baron lands. In an article published in The New Yorker

titled Either/Or: Sports, Sex, and the case of Caster Semenya, Ariel Levy describes aspiring athletes’

training conditions in, in her case, Limpopo. She says, “the school’s track is not graded, and donkey’s

and goats keep walking across it to graze on the new grass that was sprouting” (Levy 2009). She later

says, “Mokaba [the athletic coach of Masehlong], and his co-coach, Phineas Sako, train their runners

in the middle of the bush;” and then notes that “the land is webbed with brambles, and the thorns

are a serious problem for the athletes, who train barefoot” (Levy 2009). The Mail and Guardian says

that Masehlong “is an isolated outpost in the bush, surrounded by miles of dry and dusty scrubland”

(Mail and Guardian 2009). These descriptions of Semenya’s home town and background serve the

purpose of contextualising her overnight success while simultaneously they paint a picture of

Semenya as being humble.

The hype and resultant controversy of Semenya’s career began after the 12th IAAF 2009 World

Championships (of athletics) in Berlin; in which Semenya completed the 800-meter women’s final

race in 1-minute: 55-seconds: 45-split seconds with a two and a half second gap between herself and

her competitors (Levy 2009; Findlay 2009). Prior to this, Semenya competed in the Commonwealth

Youth Games in India in 2008 finishing in the same 800m race at 2:04 (Levy 2009). One month before

the World Championships, she showed an improvement on her Commonwealth games time by

completing her race in 1:56:72 at the African Junior Athletics Championships in Mauritius in July

2009; seemingly preparing her for her 1:55.45 victory in Berlin. Semenya’s accomplishments and

improvements were not received in a celebratory way. After winning the race, critics surfaced

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almost immediately, Levy describes a scene from video footage where a reporter outside the

stadium exclaimed “…with that comes rumours. I heard that you were born a man?” (Levy 2009).

Levy says, “the video is very hard to watch. As the reporter speaks, Semenya’s breathing quickens,

and she appears to be on the verge of a panic. Then she looks at the ground and says, “I have no

idea about that thing…I don’t give a damn about it,” and walks away from the cameras” (Levy 2009).

This scene is very unsettling to read about. Semenya’s reaction to the reporter may either make her

seem guilty, as if a secret had been uncovered, or show her confusion about a part of herself that

she never thought to question, nor be questioned about.

The IAAF claims to have publicly interrogated Semenya’s gender because of her rapid speed

improvement as well as the prevailing rumours circulating on the internet via blogposts. Further,

Semenya’s female counterparts who were not as successful in those races overtly expressed their

dissatisfaction with what they claimed, disadvantaged them, women, racing against who they

referred to as “a man”, when being condescendingly polite, or “that thing” when being less censored

and blatantly imperialistic (Findley 2009). It was not just Semenya’s athletic talents that encouraged

organisations and the media to make her a spectacle for objectified interrogation, her “muscular

biceps and husky voice” seemed good enough reason to probe critical scientific and biological

inquiry as well. The characteristics that made her at once less feminine and more masculine

disallowed her to be considered fully women but racing with men was never an option either.

Although Semenya raced with and as a woman, she was not feminine enough. Her physical features

caused spectators to classify her as a hermaphrodite, this allows for an exploration of the

boundaries within which one needs to conform to in order to be considered a woman in this society.

In the sections which follow, I am going to first explain the IAAF’s claim to questioning Semenya’s sex

within the context of arbitrary medical definitions of a hermaphrodite as well as the way in which

the IAAF, just as dubiously and arbitrarily judged Semenya. I will then show how the women with

whom Semenya competed as well as the media sources relied solely on her looks and demeanour as

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a means for rejecting her female identity as her characteristics did not fit those required by society.

Sandra Lee Bartky’s (1990) text is useful here for describing the socially accepted performances of

normative femininity that Semenya is not regarded to fit into. I will also interweave Judith/Jack

Halberstam’s (2005) text on masculine femininity and ‘The Bathroom Problem’ to show the spaces in

which society rejects women who are gender different. The IAAF, the media, and the other women

who tried to compete with Semenya were and are examples of some of the agents who police

femaleness and femininity in society.

Hermaphrodites and/in Society...

The IAAF as well and the IOC are organisations involved with policing gender differentiation in the

athletic arena. Dreger refers specifically to the IOC as she explains that they have a history of

examining participants’ genders to ensure that there are no male athletes masquerading as women

(I suppose this is because the IOC assume that a man competing with women would put him in a

better position to win, rather than if he were competing with those on his same level, suggesting

some self-evident idea that by virtue of being a man he is physically and thus athletically fitter and

more able than a women, a notion which in itself possess a kind of biological gender bias) (Dreger

1998, 7). Their terms for differentiating who may or may not be considered a woman, however,

were and are inconsistent and constantly changing. At first, during around 1930s, Dreger explains

that the IOC committee used genital examination as a tool for testing and determining sex. Upon

realising that making people get undressed was an invasive measure, in 1968 the committee

adopted a method of testing sex chromosomes by way of “buccal smears” (Dreger 1998, 7).

However this proved inconsistent as they realised that some women may have had high

testosterone levels but their bodies were not responsive to the testosterone production and thus

the hormone had no effect on them (Dreger 1998, 7). This uncertain method of classification is

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shown further by Heather Munro Prescott, who reviewed Dreger’s book, when she points out that

even before genital testing, physicians for and independent of athletic events, relied on gonad

testing, which designated the title of ‘woman’ to those people who had ovaries (Prescott 2000, 1).

The conditions then, for classifying who can be considered as male or female is more historical

rather than factual, Dreger states,

“a hundred years ago we could not point to “genes” in the way we can today, but being able

to point to genes doesn’t mean we have found the ultimate, necessary, full-all-time answer

to what it means to be of a certain sex. The ultimate decision to define males, females, and

hermaphrodites in particular ways necessarily depends all at once on contemporary

concepts and available technologies and the tolerance or intolerance of a given definition’s

larger implications” (Dreger 1998, 9).

Thus Dreger here explains that how we define what it means to be a female or a male is necessarily

dependent on the available resources and apparatus used for classifying based on technological and

scientific advancement but its defining also depends on what is at stake for the society in which a

hermaphrodite may or may not exist. That is, understanding the reasons why society might reject

sexually ambiguous individuals. Aside from the fact that there are many social distinctions (like

labelling a mother as such) that rely on sexual differentiation, there is also the need for “keeping

society straight” (Dreger 1998, 9). This is not just in terms of organisationally, but in the politically

charged sense of maintaining heterosexuality, that is, if we (society) do not know who is man or a

woman , how will we know who is heterosexual or homosexual? Knowing the sex and sexual

orientation of an individual seems a trivial matter to some of us but I have seen this sex, gender,

sexuality anxiety played out in real life. In the building where I live, there are two gender ambiguous

individuals –that is, they are ambiguous to everyone else but are certain of their gender identity

themselves. One has been rumoured to be a female-to-male transsexual and the other was born a

woman but prefers to remain gender neutral. I was once having a conversation with two of my

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roommates about these individuals referring to the latter as ‘they’ (a gender pronoun she told me

she preferred). The conversation about these individuals was about voting for Resident Hall Council

as both of gender ambiguous students were enlisted as candidates but after my use of the gender

pronoun, the conversation changed. My roommates were confused and asked how this person could

request to be called ‘they’, the pair expressed their confusion and dissatisfaction on this matter,

ending off by saying they would not be comfortable having such ‘confused’ children, they would

detest living with such individuals, and further, they doubted that they would vote for either of them

for hall council.

This type of gender anxiety leads to society’s gender policing and is played out in what Judith/Jack

Halberstam refers to as “the bathroom problem” (Halberstam 1990, 20). Writing in 1990,

Halberstam asks:

“if three decades of feminist theorising about gender has thoroughly dislodged the notion

that anatomy is destiny, that gender is natural and that male and female are the only

options, why do we still operate in a world that assumes that people who are not male are

female, and people who are not female are male (and even that people who are not male

are people!)” (Halberstam 1990, 20).

The social truth is shown by my roommates’ reactions that society still has difficulty separating birth

sex from gender identity and even less of an easy time accepting genders that do not stick to social

norms. The extent to which people who are gender different are ridiculed and bullied in the space of

the woman’s bathroom shows that society’s gender police come in male and female form, practicing

patriarchy and “matriarchy” (Wittig 1997, 310) and both bullies are intolerable to those who are sex

and gender different. Halberstam describes various scenes in which masculine women who use the

womens’ bathroom have been made to feel out of place by security guards who make the mistake of

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assuming they are men and so try to redirect them to the male bathroom; and also by women who

sarcastically snicker and audibly ask one another “is that a man or a women” (Halberstam 1990, 22).

The bathroom problem highlights how simplified sex and gender distinction is conceived to be, like

black and white; an individual should only be one or the other. If socially accepted modes of

femininity are not overtly expressed by an individual and visible on their body then, this person is

not allowed access to things that are designated and reserved for women –like the female

bathroom.

The notions of classifying male, female or hermaphrodite biologically and the case of the bathroom

problem are the theories that are personified in the lived experience of Caster Semenya. Levy states

that the gender tests that were leaked revealed that Semenya had external female genitalia, no

ovaries or uterus, and “undescended testes…which provided her with three times the amount of

testosterone present in an average female – and so a potential advantage over her competitors”

(Levy 2009). Even Karen Gurney who wrote Sex and the Surgeon’s Knife: The Family Court’s

Dilemma…Informed Consent and the Specter of Iatrogenic Harm to Children with Intersex

Characteristics indicates that “a hermaphrodite is a rare condition in which the gonads have

elements of both ovarian and testicular tissue” (Gurney 2007, 628). But if we think of these

classifications in the context of historical definitions, it is clear that these definitions are arbitrary. As

Dreger has shown, the means for organising sex are inconsistent and ultimately subjective. That men

of medicine and science of the IOC have historically dabbled between gonads, genitals,

chromosomes, and hormones is an indication of how difficult it may be to define gender based on a

certain aspect of the human body; exactly which “traits are so important to femalehood and

malehood that the possession of a combination of those traits by any single body would necessarily

designate that single body hermaphroditic?” (Dreger 1998, 6-7). It becomes difficult to pick and

choose which body parts to rely on to define what makes one a woman. When Levy asked the IAAF

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what sparked them to inquire about Semenya’s sex, Nick Davies, the IAAF’s communications

director, responded that it was the “incredible improvement in this athlete’s performance” as well

as South African web pages and blogs that “were alleging that she was a hermaphrodite athlete”

(Levy 2009). They undertook the tests to ensure that there were no male hormone levels that

afforded Semenya benefits when competing against other women –echoing the notion that the

possession of male hormones are an advantage over undeveloped female ones. The IAAF use

hormones as an indicator of sex differentiation. The hype around functional testosterone (such as in

Semenya’s case) is that, according to Levy, it increases muscle mass and increases red blood cell

production making “a faster, better athlete, and enables a body to recover more quickly from

exhaustion” (Levy 2009). Levy also states these benefits to be the reason why most athletes dope

using testosterone, but this was not the case with Semenya. Semenya was not doping or cheating,

she in fact then, had a natural God-given advantage that she should not have been punished for.

Semenya’s situation did not expose her as a problematic body possessing a ‘rare condition’, her

situation highlighted the problem with having only 2 sex types as it is predicted that one cannot be

born with hormones of the other, and if they are then they are gender ambiguous, “deviant”

(Halberstam 1990, 21) individuals. Furthermore, and even more baffling, Findley states that Bruce

Kidd who is the Canadian Sports Policy advisor contended that hormones do not determine the fate

of an athlete, wealth does (FIndlay 2009). Kidd says, “the richer the athlete, the higher the likelihood

of a winner…in other words the salaries of your parents are a more accurate success indicator than

testosterone” (Findlay 2009). I guess by this Kidd suggests that more money means more training

and more access to facilities which could seem to make sense but it does not account for physical

practice, which for a sport like running, surely is more significant. However, Kidd’s conception of

successful sports people then makes me wonder why so many articles found it necessary to describe

Semenya’s background, as someone who was not wealthy but who trained in these baron sandy

fields without any shoes. Were these sources suggesting, as Kidd was, that a lack of wealth meant

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Semenya could not possibly be in a position to beat her wealthy first world competitors with a 2.5

second lag?

The Racing Track is a Bathroom Problem

Semenya’s bathroom problem is one that has been perhaps more traumatic. For Semenya the

bathroom has literally become the site in which her sex has been literally checked on. Levy states

that “Semenya became accustomed to visiting the bathroom with a member of a competing team so

that they could look at her private parts and then get on with the race. “They’re doubting me,” she

would explain to her coaches” (Levy 2009). ‘The bathroom problem’ was also played out on the

athletic field, in the women’s category. Because her sex was not “readable at a glance” (Halberstam

1990, 23), it was supposed that Semenya was in the wrong place. Halberstam says that “single-

gender bathrooms are only for those who fit clearly into one category (male) or the other (female)”,

she also notes that “the women’s bathroom accordingly becomes a sanctuary of enhanced

femininity…a gender factory” (Halberstam 1990, 24). Athletic gender categories can be viewed in the

same way; that Semenya was continuously questioned about her gender shows that the bathroom

problem is comparable in various domains of life where gender is produced and monitored. The

athletic arena creates separate categories that expose that space as “a violent enforcement of our

current gender system” (Halberstam 1990, 25). Caster Semenya describes the violence she was

victim to throughout this process:

“I have been subjected to unwarranted and invasive scrutiny of the most intimate and

private parts of my being” (Findlay 2009).

The enforcement of violence is further exaggerated by the IAAF’s requirement of individuals with

higher testosterone levels to undergo surgery or receive hormone therapy (Findlay 2009). The IAAF

literally forces an individual to conform to normative femininity if that person wants to continue

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their career and occupation as an athlete. I have not found substantial sources to indicate whether

Semenya received surgery but the Toronto Star indicates that she does receive therapy of some kind.

Moreover, Semenya’s physical transformation is clear, just one month after the controversy

surfaced, You Magazine published an article about Semenya with her on the cover wearing a formal

black dress and multiple chain necklaces, and Semenya was given long hair extensions. In a month,

she already appeared more acceptably feminine by society’s narrow standards.

What is feminine? What should Semenya have looked like?

If the IAAF claim that it was Semenya’s improvement in her performance that warranted inquiry into

her testosterone levels and sex but I cannot help wondering why she was not tested for doping as

athletes usually are when they’re performance increases drastically. I also question why she was

accompanied to the bathroom by her opposition to prove her sex on previous numerous occasions?

If this happened constantly before her 2009 record in Berlin then it is somewhat self-evident that

her non-conforming female appearance attracted scrutiny, more than inquiry, from competitors and

larger organisations. Maya Rupert of the Huffington Post contends that,

“There is a widely held standard of beauty and femininity that is based on white racial

characteristics. Because an assumption of whiteness has permeated gender norms, many

features typically associated with white women are popularly mischaracterized as features

of all women. Thus, women of color are often perceived as being less feminine. In a system

where perception determines whether an athlete’s gender will be tested, the inevitable

result will be that women of color are more likely to be challenged” (Rupert 2012).

The standard of femininity against which Semenya was measured can be understood in terms of

Bartky’s text about disciplining the female body. Bartky elaborates on various forms of discipline that

women’s bodies are subjected to involving dieting, exercise, skin routine, and how one should

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actively carry oneself however, I will focus only on body size and shape to make my point. Bartky

states that “massiveness, power, or abundance in a women’s body is met with distaste” (Bartky

1990, 66). She describes the ideal feminine body today as one that is “taut, small breasted, and

narrow hipped” a silhouette that Bartky says is more akin to a “pubescent girl than to an adult

women” (Bartky 1990, 66). Bartky may have been writing in the 1990s but the prolific media images

of the ideal feminine figure today has gotten even smaller, and this constant influx of visual imagery

of the pubescent ideal becomes “culturally transmitted more and more” (Bordo 1997, 94) until

eventually they become standardised, internalised, and normalised as the acceptable representation

not only of femininity but of being female.

Bartky explains that in order to reach this ideal women diet and exercise to the most extreme

degree, where dieting takes the form of starvation and exercise routines become obsessive. On the

starvation-diet, Bartky says,

“dieting disciplines the body’s hungers: Appetite must be monitored at all times and

governed by iron will. Since the innocent need of the organism for food will not be denied,

the body becomes one’s enemy” (Bartky 1990, 66)

Thus women who aim for this body image are constantly at war with their bodies, developing a self-

hatred because they are forced to admire and idealise bodies that are not theirs. Since their bodies

do not look like the ones in movies, on television, or in print media, they reject and expel their

bodies and constantly punish themselves with routine starvation and exercise.

Hermaphrodites then may suffer an even greater hatred and expulsion since they are coerced into

accepting socially constructed forms of femininity and they also have to accept that because they do

even belong into a particular sex binary, that their material bodies are even more wrong, more

unacceptable than the one who has a fat body. Thus Semenya suffered in this case from being black,

being powerful, and being a hermaphrodite.

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Conclusion

Monique Wittig would argue that,

“one is not born a woman…no biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the

figure that the human female presents in society: it is civilization as a whole that produces

this creature” (Wittig 1997, 310).

Wittig here elaborates on Butler’s assertion of performative femininity. According to Butler, there is

no historical inscription of woman that precedes women, the idea of a woman is constantly created

and enacted, the creation of a feminine identity is performative (Butler 2006, 128). However, there

is a preconceived ideal of woman that is socially and historically constructed that each person either

conforms to or opposes, and those who oppose normative femininity are those that become victims

of punishment by societies gender police (Butler 2004, 156-157). Throughout this paper I have found

myself questioning whether Semenya actually is a hermaphrodite of whether she could be a

masculine female, ‘butch’ as Halberstam would say, but I do not think it actually matters. What

matters is that society is so completely intolerant towards women who choose to perform their own

ideal of femininity and that that both patriarchal and matriarchal gender police are so obsessed with

maintaining gender norms that there is not an ounce of sensitivity towards the psychological impact

left upon those who are the victims of the abuse.

There were two striking points in Levy’s article that frustrated and upset me deeply about society’s

ability to objectify hermaphrodites. First, Levy states that after Semenya has undergone her first

round of tests, Wilfred Daniels of Athletics South Africa (ASA) unexpectedly encountered her during

her warm-up routine in Berlin. Wilfred states that Semenya told him that she did not know what

tests they were doing nor what they were for, she just described that she had been instructed to put

her feet up in straps and then “they work down there”, furthermore, “they told her it was dope

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tests” (Levy 2009), they, these gender police, lied to Semenya. Daniels states that Semenya had

undergone dope tests before, so she knew these were different. The IAAf, IOC, and ASA took

advantage of and undermined this 18 year old person.

Second, Levy describes an event when she herself chanced upon Semenya during a similar warm-up

session in South Africa. She approached Semenya and tried to interact with her by asking her

questions about her career to which Semenya responded that she did not want to talk to Levy or

anyone else about what was on her mind. Levy tried to empathise saying she thought “that must

suck”, to which Semenya contested, “no…it sucks when I was running and they were writing those

things. That sucked” (Levy 2009).

There are numerous problems at play with Semenya’s case that involve society’s treatment of

individuals who are not gender wrong but rather, these people maybe make us question what makes

us so normal, or so right. Moreover, I just question why, to what end we need to maintain gender

definitions, these hierarchies of gender. Is masculinity really so imperative and is femininity really

still such an epitome of weakness that anything need be done to maintain a distinction between the

two? Further, why, in this day and age when there are so many different ways of obtaining a child,

assuming procreation is the reason for which society fears homosexuality, is heterosexuality still so

important to hold onto?...I have no answers here but I would like to start by writing papers like

these to assert for dismantling gender policing and allowing for people to be gender different, or just

allowing them to be.

Reference List:

Bartky, Sandra Lee. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” In Femininty

and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenolgy of Oppression by Sandra Lee Batky. London;

New York: Routledge, 1990. Pp 63-82.

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Bordo, Susan. “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity.” In Writing on the Body: Female

Embodiment and Feminist Theory, edited by Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah

Stanbury. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Pp. 90 – 112.

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenlogy and Feminist

Theory.” In The Performance Studies Reader, edited by Henry Bial. London; New York:

Routledge, 2004. Pp. 154-165.

Butler, Judith. “Bodily Insciptions, Performative Subversions.” In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the

Subversion of Identity 10th Anniversary Edition by Judith Butler. London; New York:

Routledge, 2006. Pp. 128-141.

Dreger, Alice Domurat. “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Intention of Sex.” USA: First Harvard

University Press, 1998.

Findlay, Stephanie. “Olympics Struggle with ‘Policing Femininty’.” The Toronto Star. June 08, 2012.

http://www.thestar.com/sports/olympics/2012/06/08/olympics_struggle_with_policing_femi

ninity.html

Gurney, Karen. “Sex and the Surgeon’s Knife: The Family Court’s Dilemma…Informed Consent and

the Specter of Iatrogenic Harm to Children with Intersex Characteristics.” American Journal of

Law and Medicine 33 (2007): 625-661.

Halberstam, Judith/Jack. “What’s That Smell? Queer Temporalities and Subcultural Lives.” In a

Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York; London: New York

University Press, 2005. Pp. 152-188.

Levy, Ariel. “Either/Or: Sports, Sex, and the Case of Caster Semenya.” The New Yorker. November 30,

2009. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/30/eitheror?currentPage=all

http://www.thestar.com/sports/olympics/2012/06/08/olympics_struggle_with_policing_femininity.html

http://www.thestar.com/sports/olympics/2012/06/08/olympics_struggle_with_policing_femininity.html

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/30/eitheror?currentPage=all

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Prescott, Heather Munro. “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Intervention of Sex by Alice Domurant

Dreger: Conduct Unbecoming a Woman; Medicine in Trail in Turn-of-the-Century Brooklyn by

Regina Morantz-Sanchez” NWSA Journal 12 (2000): 195

Rupert, Maya. “What are Little Girls Made of: The Dangers of the New Olympics Gender Tests.” The

Huffington Post. October 06, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-rupert/olympics-

gender-tests_b_1737619.html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices

The Mail and Guardian. “Semenya Saga: Chuene’s Trail of Lies.” September 18, 2009.

http://mg.co.za/article/2009-09-18-semenya-saga-chuenes-trail-of-lies

Wittig, Monique. “One is Not Born a Woman.” In In Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and

Feminist Theory, edited by Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury. New York:

Columbia University Press, 1997. Pp. 309-317.

Yanic, Oren. “Caster Semenya, Forced to take Gender Tests, is woman…and a man.” New York Daily

News. September 10, 2009. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/caster-semenya-

forced-gender-test-woman-man-article-1.176427

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-rupert/olympics-gender-tests_b_1737619.html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-rupert/olympics-gender-tests_b_1737619.html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices

http://mg.co.za/article/2009-09-18-semenya-saga-chuenes-trail-of-lies

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/caster-semenya-forced-gender-test-woman-man-article-1.176427

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/caster-semenya-forced-gender-test-woman-man-article-1.176427

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The Wrong Body?: A Cry for Multiple Considerations of Sex and Gender

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