Some Of Us Are Born This Way: Female Athletes and Testosterone Limits

On Wednesday, May 1, 2019, Caster Semenya, the 2 time-Olympic champion and the professional athlete who has competed in music and field because she became a baby, misplaced a vital conflict in the fight round gender and sports activities. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) dominated that Semenya might take hormones that could lower her clearly taking place testosterone tiers on the way to “ensure truthful competition in women’s sports activities.” If Semenya declines the suppressants she cannot compete inside the 800-meter races on the Olympics, as well as different worldwide competitions. The ruling concluded that “discrimination is necessary, affordable and a proportionate manner of attaining the IAAF requirement to maintain the integrity of woman athletics.”
As an Olympian myself, I locate this ruling devastating. I turned into a notably speedy swimmer as a young woman. I swam for France within the 1996 Olympics and broke the world record the day earlier than my respectable race — in practice. I’m scripting this from my motel room in Sydney, Australia, where I’ve been invited to speak approximately my e-book Godspeed, a memoir of growing up as a young expert athlete. My wife and I are being properly cared for, staying as visitors in an different lodge in Sydney, being shuttled around from one occasion to the following wherein I am asked insightful and considerate questions about my Olympic experience as a young swimmer who swam the quickest time within the international — out of doors of competition — and bombed on the real race day. Caster Semenya’s accomplishments outshine my very own through complete solar systems and galaxies, and yet, her plight is the plight of all herbal athletes.
Watching Caster run is like looking history occur in actual time — her best shape, her stride, and her muscles conspire in absolute ownership of her race. For me, she stands subsequent to Pelé, Michael Phelps, and Brittney Griner inside the good sized bound forward with which she has taken her sport. The fact is that maximum athletes need to content themselves with striving. Very few will change the landscape of sports activities. The quantity of expert athletes in the global is small, and the number of athletes who’re definitely talented — who absolutely trade how we reflect consideration on their game — that wide variety is so much smaller than we all recognize them by way of name. Like, different athletes who can slam dunk, play soccer like they’re dancing, and win a record-breaking 28 gold medals, Semenya has improved the bar of speed toward which all girls runners can gaze, and hope to in the future beat.
When I become swimming, I bear in mind how, on the rare event that a new record could be set, it’d ruin me and my teammates’ brains open. I wept in admiration and awe the first time a girl swimmer swam under fifty-four seconds inside the one hundred freestyle — a feat, which up until that point (laughably) were considered a real physical impossibility for a woman athlete.
A key part of the argument made with the aid of the IAFF this week revolves across the data that maximum ladies have about zero.12–1.79nmol/L of testosterone in their bodies as opposed to adult males, who’ve 7.7–29.4nmol/L. Caster falls in the latter range. I threw my phone throughout the room after I read the ruling.
Since the age of 12, I was six-foot-two. I also have Erlhos Danlos Syndrome, a degenerative condition of the connective tissue. One of the “signs” of EDS could be very lengthy hands, disproportionate to the average wing-span of the human body, plus massive ft and large arms. The average female hand size is set 168 millimeters. The common male hand length is set 188. Mine are 205 millimeters. My shoe size is further extra “male.” Why does this remember? As a swimmer, massive palms and huge toes are essentially the equivalents of flippers and paddles — our very very own naturally occurring bodily gain. These genetic advantages, coupled with the area and hard work, made me unstoppable in the water. Michael Phelps has a similar naturally occurring benefit, and Ian Thorpe here in Australia changed into so widely recognized and celebrated for the way disproportionately massive his feet where that his nickname becomes “Flippers.”
All folks, even me as an unruly, irreverent athlete, have been celebrated. One distinction I cannot help but word among myself, Phelps, and Thorpe as opposed to Caster, is whiteness. This is critical, and especially so whilst we begin to have a look at the makeup of the ruling board individuals.
The ethics board of the IAAF (who oversees authenticity and integrity in athletics) is made from ten members, three of whom are women. Only one member is black. The ruling birthday celebration of the CAS (the frame that litigates grievances brought by using athletes to the IAAF and who submitted the final ruling) has 19 contributors, 9 ladies, handiest certainly one of whom is a black girl. The majority of the judges are from the global north, nearly all of whom were knowledgeable in a former colonial empire just like the U.K. Rulings like this, particularly after they fall at our bodies of women, queer ladies, queer girls of color, should be known as out at once for what they’re: misogynist, racist, and homophobic.