Caster Semenya

The topic of Caster Semenya is a tough one. Everyone has their opinions on whether she was male or female and if it was fair for her to compete in the women’s middle-distance running event in the 2012  Olympics held in London. It is unfortunate that due to her athletic performance and physical characteristics that she was questioned to be a man. This just shows how our society associates certain physical characteristics with a certain sex and if you aren’t “normal” , meaning you display characteristics of what your sex “should” display, then you’re questionable. Because her voice was deep, it was possible that she was a man. Because her athletic abilities exceeded the performance of the other ladies, she could be a man. Because her hair was pulled back and she has very defined muscles, she was possibly a man. But why do these physical characteristics HAVE to be associated with a male? Why couldn’t she be strong? Who says she has to have a high-pitched voice? And everyone doesn’t care to have their hair down. I feel that they questioned her sexuality without fair reason because had the physical characteristics of Semenya matched that of what a woman “should” look like, her sexuality may have never been questioned. As one of her fellow competitors I could understand maybe questioning her athletic abilities. She did win by a pretty large stretch. And I could even see people questioning maybe if some steroid use was involved, which in reality sucks. Why can’t she just be really good at something and recognized for it? But that’s not how society works. So drug testing would have been one thing, but to question her sexuality I believe was completely unjust and displays how sexist our society is as a whole.