Gender Testing – Caster Semenya

When will they ever learn? Can you imagine how humiliating it must be for her to have your gender questioned? What happens if they find out that she is intersexed? That she has Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) or some other form of intersex, will they bar her from sports? Will all athletes who are intersexed, be banned from taking part in any sports?

In 1999, the International Olympic Committee changed the rules on gender testing and is now done on case-by-case bases. So if a woman doesn’t look like a woman or if someone questions her femaleness they can test her.

So why is Caster Semenya being tested? Because she doesn’t look like a woman. She wears her hair in cornrows, wears slacks and does use make-up, that coupled with her height and build made her suspect. Therefore, the gender police dragged her in for a gender test (Which by the way when the International Association of Athletics Federations announced the testing it violated their own rules on maintaining confidentiality.).

Talk about a slap in the face, to be required to verify your gender because you do not pass as a woman must be every woman’s nightmare how humiliating. The transgender community talks about “passing privilege” well now the gender police is forcing their standards of what a woman should look like on everyone else.

It is time to end this humiliating practice.