While reading the article Runner Caster Semenya has heard the gender comments all her life, I could not stop thinking about how furious I
would be if I was in her spikes. Caster
Semenya is a twenty two year old standout track and field athlete from South
Africa in the 800m dash. Semenya won
gold in the women's 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships with a time of
1:55.45 in the final. Eyebrows were
raised after this victory due to her smoking her competitors by 2.45
seconds. This was when she received
slander for possibly being a man.
Semenya
was teased all her life about looking and acting like a boy but she just
shrugged it off. After her victory at
the World Championships she was to have a gender test. This issue was publicly talked and criticized
on where it should have been a private manner.
Semenya
was chosen to carry the country’s flag during the 2012 Summer Olympics in
London. She had also competed in the
800m dash where she won a silver medal finishing with a time of 1:57:23
seconds. ( I believe Semenya could have
won if she would have pushed harder). Below is a clip of the 800m dash at the
London Olympics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR9G_cFDw4s
Semenya is a very
strong African American woman who has been through a lot. She has never gave up and continues to push
forward even through all of the negative things that are being said about
her. I cannot even imagine going through
what she was went through. One has to be
mentally and physically tough to be able to put those negative words in the
back of your head and not even care about what people are saying. I really like what Athletics South Africa
President Leonard Chuane has to say about the issue.
"I'm
angry. I'm fuming. This girl has been castigated from day one, based on
what?" Chuene said. "There's no scientific evidence. You can't say
somebody's child is not a girl. You denounce my child as a boy when she's a
girl? If you did that to my child, I'd shoot you (1)."
I
completely agree with Chuene minus the shooting part!
Janelle Campbell
1.
Dixon, R. (2009, August 21). Runner Caster Semenya has
heard the gender comments all her life. Los Angeles Times.
By: Taylor Cook
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you Janelle, Caster should never of had to surrender to such a bias examination solely because of the way she acted and sounded. Technically, as we mentioned in class she should of actually been subjected to a sex test if anything because a persons gender is just what they identify as, not related to their biological parts. As I mentioned in class before their is an enormous double standard on this subject because if a person is a male acting like a female then they would never subject that person to a test because mens and womens sports are very different in terms of competitive nature. Caster should be able to live her life just like everyone else and should never be ridiculed for being herself.