Caster Semenya Vows to Run Again

by Mara Gay                      

Caster Semenya just wants to run. Tuesday, the South African track star vowed to return to her sport, defying international athletics officials who refuse to let her run until they decide whether she is a woman or not.

"I hereby publicly announce my return to athletics competitions," she said in a statement.

In July of 2009, Caster Semenya ran 800 Meters in one minute and 55.45 seconds, and became one of the fastest women in the world.

There was no celebration of Semenya or her incredible accomplishment.

Instead, there was speculation over whether Semenya's "masculine characteristics" may have given her an advantage on the track.

Just days after her medal-winning sprint, the IAAF, the governing body for track and field athletes worldwide, forced the 19-year-old runner submit to so-called "gender verification tests" to prove that she is a woman. And they banned Semenya from competitive running altogether until the results were in.

The sports body brought in a team of physicians to determine whether Semenya is sufficiently female to compete with her peers.

Nick Davies, a spokesman for the IAAF, explained the process.

"There is chromosome testing, gynecological investigation, all manner of things, organs, X-rays, scans," he told The New York Times last fall. "It's very, very comprehensive."

Of course, gender is not binary. There is no scientific litmus test, no tipping point, no point of no return at which a woman is actually a man. The IAAF doesn't even have an arbitrary yardstick itself.

But Caster Semenya has been publicly poked, and prodded, and examined and observed anyway, not out of fairness to her colleagues, but in deference to the disturbing tradition of objectifying black women's bodies and an ugly bigotry against intersex individuals.

The IAAF has been allowed to reduce Semenya from an athlete - and a human - into a specimen.

Seven months later, there is still no official decision, and the IAAF will still not allow Semenya to race. For nearly a year, Semenya, who identifies as a woman, has waited in relative silence for the IAAF to decide if she is woman enough.

It seems someone else is always trying to define Semenya.

At a press conference last year, Davies explained that while Semenya would not be able to speak with reporters about why she is unable to run in the sport she loves, he would be happy to.

"I will answer for her," the spokesman said. "The decision not to put her up was taken by the IAAF and the South African federation."

"We know you want to talk to her, but she is young, she is inexperienced and she is not able to reply properly to all your questions."

Finally, on Tuesday, we discovered that Caster Semenya has a voice of her own. She began to speak out. No, better, she's begun to testify.

"I have been subjected to unwarranted and invasive scrutiny of the most intimate and private details of my being," she said in a statement Tuesday.

Semenya has begun to tell her own story, something the International Athletics Association may not be ready for. 

But they can eat her dust.

photo: by Jose Goulao under a creative commons license

Mara Gay contributes to AOL news and previously worked for The Atlantic.  Her stories have appeared in The Washington Post and The Root.  She lives in New York.