Comments on: Women Athletes: Choose Between Strong and Sexy

By: m

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:48:02 +0000

If Ms. Semenya is found to have AIS, this leads me to wonder if she was concerned about her menses (or lack thereof)?
I hesitate to ask the question because it deals with personal issues but I can’t stop thinking about it:
Late onset of menses can be an indicator of serious medical issues, including ovarian cancer (a roommate of mine saw here doctor at age 17 because she had failed to begin menstruating. Less than a week later she was starting an agressive treatment to deal with ovarian cancer.)

More generally, as an athlete, I continue to be frustrated when the male engineers who design the equipment that I use think that they can hide the fact the a product was not actually designed for women by painting it pink.
Likewise, the aggressive, combative affirmation of their heterosexuality by women athletes is also hard to take (constant references to male partners and to socially acceptable feminine behavior, etc).

By: Stefanie Gilbreath

Stefanie Gilbreath — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:52:26 +0000

I completely agree with everything you are saying about women and femininity. As an athlete myself we tend to run into this problem in our own personal lives when it comes to dating and wanting to look the part of a young lady. Unfortunately, in our society we are judged a lot by our physical features and nobody looks past what’s on the outside. It really is too bad that a woman cannot be physically fit for their sport and be considered feminine. It seems like you are forced to choose between being a “girly girl” or an athlete. In the story of Caster Semenya, I feel like the only reason they were questioning if she was a female was because she did extremely well in her race. Then, people started looking at her physical features like her abdominal area, her face, and her strongly defined arms and legs. After they put all that together then they wanted her to get tested. So, does that mean if you actually have all these features as an athlete then you are a male? Even though she ended up having some medical issues, there was nothing that was outrageously prevalent to make people think that she was a man. The way people look at female athletes need to change completely and more people should look into this a lot more.

By: Freya

Freya — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:43:06 +0000

Re: abs as an indicator of masculinity

I have abs. Not as good as Caster Semenya’s, but I do have a six-pack. I would undoubtedly have better abs if I actually worked on them, instead of merely having some medical issues which have the side-effect of making it very difficult for me to put on fat coverage and very easy to put on muscles (as well as the exercise intolerance). And I am definitely female.

By: matlun

matlun — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:24:25 +0000

I did not mean to come off as overly dismissive about the issue. I just wanted to say that you need some sort of rule for who are allowed to compete in women's events. No matter where you draw the line there will be room for perceived injustice, so you just have to try to find the best possible compromise. That being said, it is certainly possible to criticise the current procedures, but it takes a somewhat more balanced view. See for example the position of the Women's Sport Foundation.

By: laprofe63

laprofe63 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:06:50 +0000

Interesting discussion. Sad situation for the athlete who deserves to enjoy her victory without the media spectacle.

Does anyone think race has anything to do with this? Or is this all about the fact that she won and doesn’t look as women athletes are “supposed” to –ie. “still pretty” –in a traditional way of course (plucked eyebrows, soft jaw, inviting smile, etc.)

When I first saw this in the news my gut told me that it’s her face that “offends” the sensibilities of those watching women’s sports. “Sorry, no manly (read “ugly”) women allowed. Gotta be ‘HOTT’”! (…as in still sexually desirable to the male gaze.)

By: Jadey

Jadey — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:40:37 +0000

Also, it occurs to me that my previous comment could be read as dismissive of sports and this discussion, which is not my intention. I think that this issue has a lot of resonance and I think the treatment of Caster Semenya is shameful and indicative of some serious issues, some of which I think are deeply embedded in the mindset and culture of competitive sports, and how bodies are conceptualized and treated within athletic communities and in society at large.

By: Jadey

Jadey — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:35:22 +0000

Competitive sports are pretty far beyond my ken, so I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. That being said, it seems to me that given the vagaries of human genetics and how important every little advantage is at this level, the only truly meaningful competitor you can have in these situations is yourself. That is, if the only point is to win (which I’m gathering is the case). Otherwise these thresholds of who can and cannot compete (and against whom) seem arbitary and biased towards the status quo.

By: shah8

shah8 — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:29:14 +0000

What’s more likely to happen is that you’ll find a whole bunch of run-of-the-mill athletes who play the game because they love it–and then tell them they can’t play the game anymores. Hey, because they are cheating, regardless of whether they actually obtain any benefit from diverging from whatever norms the testing agency proposes.

Security theater at the expense of women’s bodies.

By: ACG

ACG — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:22:35 +0000

From what I can tell, the biggest challenge in testing for sex – particularly intersex, because it’s generally accepted that an extremely talented XX athlete is still a female athlete, regardless of outlier-level talent – is to know what to do when you get there. Say a female athlete, genitalia and all, is tested and comes up XY. What do you do with her? How do you decide which group she should compete with? Do you say, “Oh, well, you’re better than the women because you’re an XY, so you have to compete with the men” and then watch her possibly underperform because she’s a woman competing against men? And when she gets to the men’s league, would they kick her back to the women’s league because she presents female? At the very least, you run the risk of an Annika Sorenstam, who dominated the LPGA but showed up average against the men.

And none of this is to say that a woman can’t possibly compete at an elite level against men – but the ones who can are quite rare. Forcing a female athlete, even an XY one, to compete out of her league because she’s just too good to really be a female athlete will force a lot of talented, dedicated women out of high-level competition. And “Well, now, we just can’t figger out where to put ‘em” is a crappy excuse for excluding intersex athletes from competition.

To me, though, the entire argument kind of detracts from Semenya’s situation. She’s not fighting for her right to perform as an intersex athlete. She’s fighting for her right to compete as a female athlete – for the sport to recognize that she can look the way she looks and perform the way she performs and still be fully, unarguably female.

By: shah8

shah8 — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:46:45 +0000

Of course we can agree to disagree. Nothing wrong with that, and I’m cool with allowing your words to stand and speak for itself.