SA readings
There is no escaping the reality that the regulations have the effect of coercing some women to undergo medically unnecessary procedures to alter their hormone levels
Human Rights Watch
Despite claims from IAAF that the regulations will not prevent any women from competing in athletics, they do effectively force some women with intersex traits to choose between undergoing medically unnecessary intervention to lower their testosterone levels
Human rights watch
in the absence of a clear scientific consensus that women with higher than typical natural testosterone have a substantial and unjustifiable performance advantage, there is no basis for these regulations as a necessary and proportionate response
Human rights watch
Semenya does not look like most female athletes. People questioned whether she was really a woman. Some even e-mailed the International Association of Athletics Federations, the worldwide governing body for track and field, with their doubts.
Levy
She has a powerful stride and remarkable efficiency of movement: in footage of the World Championships, you can see the other runners thrashing behind her, but her trunk stays still, even as she is pumping her muscle-bound arms up and down. Her win looks effortless, inevitable. "Even when we were training, 1used to pair her with the males," Sako told me. "I feel like she was too powerful for ladies." It was a stunning victory for Semenya, for the Moletjie Athletics Club, and for South Africa.
Levy
What is the general theme of the Either/Or article?
Levy talks about Semenya and her gender verification testing; the toll on her verification testing on her mental health and her athletic career; talks about the gender verification process as a whole; talks about her background in Limpopo and her training; corrective surgery on babies; her voice sounds manly ; talks about AIS, how to test for intersex, etc; gives options for HOW to categorize athletes
What is the main theme of the unexpected body: from sara Baartman to Caster Semenya?
body image and body politics; Talks about identity and gender politics; looks into south african press and how they covered the case of Semenya; negotiating the body, gender, etc; impurity leading to purity of femininity; examples of how the body is portrayed and problematized in media`
The history of non-consensual "normalizing" procedures conducted on and promoted for people with intersex variation, such as procedures to reduce the size of the clitoris... has been thoroughly de-bunked as unscientific, unethical, and in violation of international human rights law
human rights watch
what is the general theme of the S&W chapter?
it gives a rundown of history, especially for black women, in south africa during apartheid; mentions sports and the developing sports bodies that were separate from white sports; talks about the necessity to find common ground after apartheid ends; the woman's body is always on display
"No," she said, very firmly. Her voice was strong and low. "That doesn't suck. It sucks when I was running and they were writing those things. That sucked. That is when it sucks. Now I just have to walk away. That's all I can do." She smiled a small, bemused smile. "Walk away from all of this, maybe forever. Now I just walk away." Then she took a few steps backward, turned around, and did.
levy
"People always press me: 'Isn't there one marker we can use?' No. We couldn't then and we can't now, and science is making it more difficult and not less, because it ends up showing us how much blending there is and how many nuances, and it becomes impossible to point to one thing, or even a set of things, and say that's what it means to be male."
levy
As semenya was celebrated, other sportswomen who transgressed gender expectations met a very different fate
orgeret
Caster Semenya resists the traditional categories of male or female and is hence perceived as 'impure' or as 'polluted'.
orgeret
Caster's looks, even after having been 'turned into a glamour girl', definitely break with the ordinary norm of beauty, such as this norm was represented by the three 'tv star women'
orgeret
Most of the newspapers talk about semenya, and it is rather seldom that her own voice is heard.
orgeret
Semenya case provides an important site for investigating cultural anxieties about otherness-- and raises interesting discussions of normalcy
orgeret
Some felt the need to encounter this perceived threat that Caster represented, through rapidly reproducing sterotypes on what a 'real woman' should be. strip club owner Lolly Jackson received a lot of backlash in the media for his controversial billboard advertisements, arguing that among his strip club dancers, there was 'no need for Gender Testing'
orgeret
The newspaper coverage of semenya's case allowed for more perspective into the often unnoticed, and a certain negotion of class took place. The underprivileged areas need for better training facilities was highlighted several times in the analyzed articles and an important them was that South Africa has the potential to nurture athletes from disadvantaged backgrounds and make them into champions
orgeret
You carried the picture of the totally 're-made' Semenya and the headline, "Wow, look at caster now". The picture of Caster all made up, sitting in a 'feminine pose', holding her hands in a passive/possing way, showing off the sparkling nail polish
orgeret
the IAAF explained the motivation for the test was not suspected cheating but a desire to determine whether Semenya had a 'rare medical condition' that gave her an unfair conmpetitive advantage
orgeret
What is the purpose of the Human Rights Watch Elegibility for the Femal Classification article?
the purpose is to persuade the IAAF to remove this rule because it is against human rights and because there is no backing for this discrimination; the coersion of women to choose between their sport or surgery is not right; force women with intersex traits to make a decission; this "normalizing" is wrong and motivated by prejudice that is presented as science; they have no proof this is a valid way to test people
A figure in a black sweatshirt with the hood up walked along the path about thirty yards in front of me. There was something about this person's build and movements that drew my attention. I got up and followed along the path, until I caught up to the person where he or she was stopped behind the cafeteria, talking to a waiter and a cook, both of whom were much shorter than she was. It was Caster Semenya. She wore sandals and track pants and kept her hood up. When she shook my hand, I noticed that she had long nails. She didn't look like an eighteen-year-old girl, or an eighteen-year-old boy. She looked like something else, something magnificent. I told her I had come from New York City to write about her, and she asked me why. "Because you're the champion," I said. She snorted and said, "You make me laugh." I asked her if she would talk to me, not about the tests or Chuene but about her evolution as an athlete, her progression from Limpopo to the world stage. She shook her head vigorously. "No," she said. "I can't talk to you. I can't talk to anyone. I can't say to anyone how I feel or what's in my mind."
levy
Chase founded the Intersex Society of North America (now defunct) to draw attention to the frequently tragic consequences of doctors' performing irreversible surgery on newborns to enforce a sex-one that the baby might just as easily as not grow up to reject. The society advocated assigning intersex children a gender at birth but leaving their bodies intact, so that upon adulthood they could make their own choices about whether they wished to undergo surgical modification.
levy
Chuene shrugged. "They say I lied. That's what they are saying. I said no. There is confidentiality! LA.AF. is in trouble for breaching that. Who was going to be Leonard to say that?" The engines started roaring as the small plane took off. "It was 22-Catch situation!" Chuene shouted over the noise. "In will do this, it's 'Why did you withdraw her?' If! did not, 'Why did you allow her to run?' Whatever way you look at it, I'm judged. I'm judged!"
levy
Chuene was not only aware of the Berlin tests; he had authorized them, and, at the urging of the LA.A.F., he had also had Semenya tested before she left Pretoria. O
levy
In September, the Johannesburg weekly Mail & Guardian exposed Chuene's dishonesty about authorizing the tests in Pretoria and Berlin. Chuene contends that he was simply following I.A.A.F. procedure, and that his deceit was a well-intentioned attempt to maintain confidentiality. After the story broke, he held a press conference to apologize for lying to the nation, but the apology was not unconditional. "Tell me someone," he said, "who has not lied to protect a child."
levy
Leonard Chuene did not take Adams's advice. Instead, Semenya ran in a qualifying heat on August 16th and then in the semifinals, the next day. After her success in the semifinals, a television reporter outside the stadium blurted out, "With that comes rumors. I heard one that you were born a man?" The video is very hard to watch. As the reporter speaks, Semenya's breathing quickens, and she appears to be on the verge of 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
On her coffee table, Soldaat had a photocopy of the South African magazine You, which featured a photo spread showing Caster Semenya dressed in high heels and a short skirt, her hair fluffed out and her face made up. Her expression was painfully uncomfortable, and the pictures were garish. "My sister was crying when she saw this whole thing on paper," Soldaat said, flipping through the pages. "It's a disaster. She look like a drag queen! I can just imagine her at night when she's alone, looking at these pictures
levy
Particularly in remote areas, where babies tend to be born in the presence of a mother, a grandmother, and maybe a midwife, it is easy to keep a baby's genitalia a secret. People want to insulate their children from the shame of being different, so they simply pretend that they are not. "Limpopo and Eastern Cape are the high incidence of intersex people," Soldaat said. "And when you grow up in the rural areas it's a mess, because people don't even go to doctors."
levy
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 are doubting me," she would explain to her coaches, as she headed off the field toward the lavatory
levy
Semenya is breathtakingly butch. Her torso is like the chest plate on a suit of armor. She has a strong jawline, and a build that slides straight from her ribs to her hips. "What I knew is that wherever we go, whenever she made her first appearance, people were somehow gossiping, saying, 'No, no, she is not a girl,' " Phineas Sako said, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin. " 'It looks like a boy'-that's the right words-they used to say, 'It looks like a boy.'
levy
South Africans have been appalled by the idea of a person who thinks she is one thing suddenly being told that she is something else. The classification and reclassification of human beings has a haunted history in this country. Starting with the Population Registration Act of 1950, teams of white people were engaged as census-takers. They usually had no training, but they had the power to decide a person's race, and race determined where and with whom you could live, whether you could get a decent education, whether you had political representation, whether you were even free to walk in certain areas at certain hours
levy
South Africans have compared the worldwide fascination with Semenya's gender to the dubious fame of another South African woman whose body captivated Europeans: Saartjie Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. Baartman, an orphan born on the rural Eastern Cape, was the servant of Dutch farmers near Cape Town.
levy
eported that Semenya's test results had been leaked, and that they showed that Semenya, though she was brought up as a girl and had external female genitalia, did not have ovaries or a uterus. Semenya was born with undescended testes, the report said, which provided her with three times the amount of testosterone present in an average female-and so a potential advantage over competitors
levy
