Female Masculinity- What about their feelings?

-->

Female Masculinity- What about their feelings?

            After reading and discussing in class about female masculinity, and then going in depth and looking at the story of Caster Semenya I couldn’t help feel disgust and sadness toward our society. Through the entire lecture all I could think about was how this poor woman felt. The entire world was discussing how she resembled a man, and how they needed to perform tests on her. It was as if we (society) were the “plastics” and this new girl (Semenya) refused to wear pink on a Wednesday so she couldn’t sit with us. (There will probably be more mean girls references through out this blog post) Because she had manly features we could not go on her word that she was a female, no we needed to see for ourselves. How disturbing is that? I just can’t help but think about the depressing role this could have played on her life.

            Actually maybe I can, but obviously my side story is not as dramatic as what this woman went through. When I was a child I had a horrible, horrible bowl cut. My mom traveled a lot and my father was incapable of doing hair, so this was an easy solution. Also because my mom traveled my father, the bricklayer, was the one who picked out my clothes each day. Needless to say I wasn’t wearing dresses, overalls seemed to play a big part in my youth wardrobe. One day at the supermarket I went to pick up a discarded toy and place it back on the shelf, as I did so a employee said “Thank you little boy,” I lost my shit and to this day it is one of my most vivid memories. It only took one comment; from one person for me to change how I felt about my appearance, and myself I grew my hair out and ditched the overalls. But Caster Semenya had the whole nation talking about what she looked like. (Here is me in my not so feminine days, also I was obviously not the happiest graduate of preschool class of 1995)

            We were the mean girls. And it seemed that we never once stopped to think about how this emotionally affected Caster. We just gave her makeovers, and put her on the covers of magazines with the sub headlines of “I love my new makeover!”. But who really loves being told they need to completely change? I’m going to assume no one. We couldn’t celebrate the fact that she was a world record-breaking runner; only that she isn’t as feminine as other around her. It’s sad to think that we can’t celebrate someone for being who they are, or even just accept them.