{"id":111,"date":"2009-08-22T15:54:12","date_gmt":"2009-08-22T19:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/?p=111"},"modified":"2009-08-22T15:54:12","modified_gmt":"2009-08-22T19:54:12","slug":"gender-and-south-african-runners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/2009\/08\/22\/gender-and-south-african-runners\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender and South African Runners"},"content":{"rendered":"

While my African and Caribbean friends were gloating about Usain Bolt’s win in the 100 meters at the World Championships for Track & Field, another controversy was building off the track.\u00a0 An 18-year old South African, Caster Semenya, won the women’s 800 meters, blowing away the field.\u00a0 The problem, for many people, is that they don’t think she’s a woman.\u00a0 By looking at her, and taking her extraordinary speed into account, I can’t say I blame the skeptics:<\/p>\n

\"Caster

Caster Semenya<\/p><\/div>\n

So now they’re testing her gender.\u00a0 For anyone who’s read Middlesex<\/a>, this raises some interesting questions.\u00a0 How exactly do you test someone’s gender?\u00a0 If you find that someone has some male genetic components, does that mean they’re a man?\u00a0 And then what does THAT mean?\u00a0 In everyday life, ironically, these issues might not be such a big deal.\u00a0 When it comes to sports, especially sports in which men and women compete in the same, yet segregated, events, it’s a little more complicated.<\/p>\n

This article<\/a> from the NYT does a good job of outlining why this testing is so complex.\u00a0 I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that she has both male and female genetic characteristics.\u00a0 What does this mean for her future competition?\u00a0 Would she be banned from both men’s and women’s events?\u00a0 How isn’t that discriminatory?\u00a0 And furthermore, aren’t all world-class athletes genetically gifted or extraordinary in some way?\u00a0 If someone has a gene that gives them better lung capacity, shouldn’t they be banned for having an unfair advantage?<\/p>\n

It’s been determined that Semenya wasn’t doping.\u00a0 She was raised as a\u00a0 girl.\u00a0 It seems profoundly unfair to me to treat her as if she cheated.\u00a0 On the other hand, if she’s determined to be more male than female (again, lord knows how they’re going to figure that out, or what standard they’re going to use), it seems profoundly unfair to the other women who are running to let her compete.\u00a0 The results will take weeks to come in.\u00a0 I’ll be interested to see how the IAAF handles this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While my African and Caribbean friends were gloating about Usain Bolt’s win in the 100 meters at the World Championships for Track & Field, another controversy was building off the track.\u00a0 An 18-year old South African, Caster Semenya, won the women’s 800 meters, blowing away the field.\u00a0 The problem, for many people, is that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}