Caster Semenya : the Hesitancy Beauty

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How do you feel when your daughter, after she is growing up, got tested and the result says neither your daughter is a woman or a man, but hermaphrodite. Angry?
Yup, you should be.

It is happen to Dorcas Semenya, a mother of South African woman’s 800 meters world champion, Caster Semenya. After her amazing win at 800 meters World Athletics Championship last month, the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federation) ordered the teen to extensive tests. And result that Semenya has no womb or ovaries and has internal testes, which is we know it is the male sexual organs to produce testosterone. The tests result should not come out in public, but it did.

The Daily Telegraph in Sydney reported that gender tests on Semenya, who has prominent muscles, a low voice and some facial hair, have found she is a hermaphrodite.

All Semenya’s family have slammed the claims a day after the news, but Dorcas, her mother, only wept and asking The Times newspaper reporter back, “What do you want me to do? Why must jealousy drive people to say such bad things? Why are you bringing all this?”

Jacob Semenya, Caster’s father said that the people who believed her daughter was not a woman were sick and crazy, he asks “Are they God?”

Semenya’s grandmother, Maphuthi Sekgale said she was shocked and angry when The Times told her about the report.

“I’ve raised her as young girl and I have not doubt that she is a girl. As the family, we don’t care who is saying what and we also don’t care, even if she won’t be running internationally, but we will always support her athletic talent,” she said of the 18-year-old.

Lesiba Rammabi, 51, the athlete’s uncle said her relatives were “very humiliated” by the reports.

“I believe Caster is normal, inside and out. What does it matter whether she can have babies or not? Many people cannot have children, why else do parents adopt? Are those women not women also? We are a normal family who looked at a child when she was born, saw that she was a girl and raised her as any other family would do. Are we now being told that we are wrong?

“We are very humiliated by what has been said and do not understand how it can be true. This is a woman who was raised a female. She will always be female, no matter what people say.”

“It is God who made her look that way but she IS a girl”

Michael Seme, her coach, told the U.K.’s Daily Mail related to the issue, “We understand that people will ask questions because she looks like a man. It’s a natural reaction and it’s only human to be curious.” But maintains that she has “nothing to hide.”

It has caused huge division with South African politicians. The country’s sports minister Makhenkesi Stofile said it’s “totally unfair and unjust”, and “will go to highest levels in contesting such decision.” Stofile has no doubts about Semenya’s gender, and called the IAAF leaking test results as disgusting and unethical. “Neither Caster nor her family deserve this kind of humiliation,” said the minister.

President Jacob Zuma
also commentating on this matter, “We have a girl who has performed and won. I don’t think we should play with people’s lives and privacy. I don’t know why we should not respect the privilege between the doctor and the patient. Why, when the tests have been done, why was it published?”

All of the family and the important people at her country stand by her side related to the issue, and it is more relieved that Caster feels no bothered about the row overshadowing her win. She was on YOU magazine‘s cover and dressed so feminine.

She looks all of these as “a joke and it doesn’t upset” her. She says “God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”

“I am who I am and I am proud of myself,” she told the magazine. “I’d like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance.”

You go girl!!

Even though she has not bothered, her coach , Michael Seme, said he was uncertain whether Semenya would compete at the 4,000m women’s event at the South African national cross-country championships in Pretoria Saturday.

Caster Semenya is not the only girl who has been through the gender controversy.  Three years ago, Indian runner Santhi Soundarajan lost her medal after failing a gender test and later attempted suicide. She told BBC Radio 5 live’s Victoria Derbyshire show that it was a very bitter and humiliating experience for her.

More than 70 years before that, Polish athlete Stanislawa Walasiewicz was also subjected to scrutiny after she won gold in the 100-metre event at the 1932 Olympics. She too was born with ambiguous genitalia.

Oprah Winfrey has invited her for the next guest on Oprah Show.