There was a big birthday party a week or so ago, in South Africa. No, not that one, not the ANC centenary, although, amazingly, people are still debating that blowout a whole week later, including how some of the VIPs got to experience what ordinary people endure everyday. This was a party of now, of today and tomorrow and then some. On January 7, Caster Semenya turned 21, and she celebrated in style, in her home village of GaMasehlong in Moletjie near Polokwane. She partied with her new coach, Maria Mutola, with the “People’s Poet” and mbaqanga singer Mzwakhe Mbuli, her family and friends, including sister athlete Ashleigh Trotter. Semenya is beaming. The pictures and reports indicate a truly joyous event.
You remember Caster Semenya
January 16, 2012 By 2 Comments
Caster Semenya’s Private Parts
September 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Reports are emerging about the extent of world-beating 800 meter track and field athlete, Caster Semenya, and of the collusion of South Africa’s track and field officials (who pretended they were on her side) with the world body, the IAAF. South Africa’s “Mail & Guardian” has details of the kind of “testing” she’s been subjected to:
… Semenya was subjected to humiliating tests in South Africa even before the gender row erupted. “The tests took almost two hours and Semenya became frustrated and even angry over the humiliating nature of the tests,” [Johannesburg Afrikaans newspaper] Beeld quoted ASA’s former head coach, Wilfred Daniels, as saying of the tests carried out in South Africa. Beeld said Semenya was “bitterly upset” when photographs of her private parts were taken during the examinations. “Her feet were in stirrups when the photographs were taken,” reportedly Daniels said. ASA officials were not immediately available for comment on the report. Semenya was led to believe she would undergo drug tests in South Africa, Beeld said.
CASTER SEMENYA AND THE IDEA OF “NORMAL” BOYS AND GIRLS
September 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment
With the media spectacle around world beating athlete Caster Semenya gaining fever pitch, South African newspaper “The Cape Times” sacrificed one of its reporters working tirelessly on inequality in South Africa, to find out how common “intersexuality” is:
“True hermaphroditism is more common in South Africa than anywhere else in the world. And specialists who deal with intersexed people in Gauteng say they’re seeing a new patient every four to six weeks – less than 10 percent of the condition’s estimated incidence in the province….This week Dr David Segal, a paediatric endocrinologist at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, said there was a greater incidence of true hermaphroditism, medically referred to as ovatesticular disorder of sex development, here than anywhere else in the world. Segal, who also works at Wits University’s Donald Gordon Medi-Clinic, explained this hermaphroditism meant a person was born with both testicular and ovarian tissue. This results in there not being enough testosterone to form a normal boy and too much for a girl. But what many people do not realise, Segal said, is that other conditions can lead to intersexuality.”
As my friend Dan Moshenberg (who forwarded it to me) remarked: Maybe, we could start, again, by having the medical profession not term every alternative `disorder’ or `deviance’. “A normal boy … a girl.”
“IF CASTER [SEMENYA] IS A BOY, I’M A BOY”
August 28, 2009 By 5 Comments
My friend Herman Wasserman and I wrote an op-ed for The Observers, the website of the French TV station, France24, on the manufactured controversy around Caster Semenya, the new 800 m woman’s track and field world champion:
